Author: Devon C. Ford
Date: 2021-11-17 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: The galaxy is thrown into chaos as each side makes its alliances. The lines have been drawn. As the slow machine of war starts to turn, allies and enemies alike move their pieces in a bid for victory. Territories are claimed and lost. Skirmishes in deep space determine ownership of the jump lanes that crisscross the galaxy. As Barton battles his way through selection for the Special Operations Group, his old friends from Odin Nine-Five are outside the wire, protecting a politician.

HADES

©2021 DEVON C. FORD

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Epilogue

Thank you for reading Hades

Also in Series

For S and R

At a time when I tried to walk away from writing, I found kindness and support in the dark.

Even if it’s often tough love!

The galaxy is thrown into chaos as each side makes its alliances and lines are drawn.

As the slow machine of war starts to turn, allies and enemies alike are moving their pieces over the board in a bid for victory. Territories are claimed and lost. Skirmishes in deep space determine ownership of the jump lanes that crisscross the galaxy.

As Barton battles his way through selection for the Special Operations Group, his old friends from Odin Nine-Five are outside the wire, protecting a politician.

Prologue

Barton

Deep Space

“Stand by for decompression in three… two…”

The airlock popped and sucked the last of the atmosphere out into the vacuum, which gave me and the three others enough momentum to launch out into nothingness like we’d been shot out of a railgun.

The acceleration was dangerous, but I’d rate it up there with a tactical boomerang landing or an escape pod ejection sequence in terms of how much discomfort it caused me.

Either way, it was another one of the million things I’d done to screw up my back in the long run.

“Barton, check your spacing,” the harsh voice in my earpiece snapped. I did, looking at the HUD displayed inside my visor, and twisted my right shoulder downward as I opened my left hand to squeeze the tiniest amount of power through the thrustor hidden in the palm of my suit’s glove.

The first time I’d tried to correct a movement in a void dive, I’d spun way out of control like someone let a damn helium balloon go without tying off the end, so naturally I was cautious about it.

“Barton, move the fuck over. You’re blocking my line!” she said again, like her path was more important than mine. I knew she was right, that her being behind me meant I needed to correct away from her line, but I didn’t like her tone, so I did it on my terms. Maybe she’d get a little fright and that might make me feel better about how hard she rode my ass.

I moved, opening my hand wider and performing a lazy victory roll just to prove that I was doing it my way before I focused and stopped fucking around. Showing off was one of the biggest no-nos there was in this environment.

“Distance to target, fifteen hundred. Fourteen eighty. Fourteen sixty.”

I heard the words but wished the asshole calling them out would save his breath. It was like getting a countdown to New Year’s that started at about ten minutes out. The distance we were covering meant a dive time of around fifteen minutes, during which there was pretty much nothing to do except keep to the course on the HUD and not lose focus. Luckily for me, the team leader felt the same way about mister countdown.

“We’ve all got HUDs, Fournier, we don’t need the damn verbal,” Heather West, our team leader, said. She sounded harsh, but she always did.

“Sorry,” Fournier responded. I could tell how nervous he was just from hearing him breathe, but she either didn’t recognize it or didn’t care.

“Distance to target, five hundred meters,” West said a little while later like I needed to know the figures, because firstly, as she said, I had my own damn HUD, and secondly because being five hundred meters from even a small ship and pointing it out was like bringing someone’s attention to the sea when you were on the beach.

The ship was massive. It was only an older model destroyer and too defunct to fight right on the front line anymore, but it still had guns and it was not a thing to ignore when it worked with two others to guard supply convoys.

“Fournier, Barton, swing to Objective Bravo. Valdez with me,” the team leader said. I threw a quick shoulder check back to see Fournier was still in formation and I moved my hands to work the little thrustors so that they sent me in the direction of the secondary objective a little way ahead of him to give me the time to decelerate.

“One hundred meters,” I reported before I forced both my hands out in front of me and opened up my fingers. This was the really tricky part, because if I screwed it up, I’d end up spinning myself out until I slammed into the side of the ship and died horribly.

In space, nobody could hear you cream.

I managed the deceleration just fine with only a couple of wobbles, which I straightened out. The thing with void dives was that you couldn’t teach them without doing them, and being out here was pretty much the most dangerous thing a little meat sack like us humans could do.

Coming to a soft and gentle rest against the hull of the ship, I immediately turned to see Fournier approach. I could tell in less than a second that he was coming in too fast.

“Fournier, decelerate!”

“I’m… trying… to…” he said between grunts as he slowed but wobbled like crazy. Somehow he managed to stay right side up and kept his hands out toward the ship, but he was still coming in too quickly. He realized it before I could say anything else but, in a panic not to cream in, he gave too much thrust and flipped his feet upside down—if there was such a concept in space—so that his ass was going to be the first thing to make contact.

He flailed desperately, grunts of fear and effort coming through the comm in my ear, and managed to twist and turn himself around again so that he landed against the angled section of the hull, his chest making first contact with enough force that my brain automatically added the bonggggg which never happened in vacuum. Inside the ship, it might’ve made a noise, which was bad, but out here I could only watch and imagine how much it hurt.

His gloves scrambled for purchase as his momentum threatened to roll him over the hull and off into the void on the other side of the ship, but just as I was about to pull myself after him, he grabbed a strong hold and stopped himself.

“I’m okay,” he whispered to me. “I’m okay.”

“Objective Alpha secured,” West reported.

I cursed silently and set to work on overriding the airlock we’d landed beside, as Fournier made his way to me crawling hand over hand and arriving just as the override sequence worked and the outer door popped open for us to force it the rest of the way.

CS Navy vessels kept their outer airlocks pressurized for a number of reasons, covert infiltration being one of them, but the NRC didn’t like to waste the air. Their weakness was ours to exploit.

We climbed inside and tried to push the doors closed again, enough so that when we rigged the control panel inside, they would seal the rest of the way and not try to suck us out with the escaping air like a clumsy but enthusiastic blowjob.

The doors locked back and the airlock slowly began to fill with air. It was intentional so nobody inside noticed any power surges or thought the airlock was malfunctioning. Somewhere a red light would quietly switch to green and if we were lucky, nobody would panic and override it to spit us back out into the void.

“Objective Bravo secure,” I reported as the pressure equalized, and we opened the inner doors to move out fast with weapons drawn. We carried another modified version of the Mk30, adapted to be usable in vacuum and underwater, and kept our suits sealed as per the boarding protocol. If we were compromised, the last thing we wanted to be doing was fumbling to get a helmet back on and sealed instead of just blowing out an airlock or otherwise compromising the hull.

“Move to RV cannon. Avoid all hostiles if possible; take them out quietly if not,” West said over our encrypted channel. Neither of us acknowledged because there was no need. Having studied the layout of the old destroyer, we knew the mission parameters just as well as she did.

Beside me, Fournier was fully recovered from his near miss in the void. Mark Harlan’s words came back to me about how Odin had suffered too many losses in such conditions. I mentally brushed that thought aside, needing to concentrate on the job in front of me and not worry about something I couldn’t control.

Fournier, a Canadian soldier who was far more capable than his performance out in the vacuum of space had implied, stacked up beside me and gave a light tap on my shoulder.

I moved down the narrow gangway like I was clearing a room, suppressed weapon tucked tightly into my chest in a two-handed grip so all I needed to do was point my body at any target and squeeze to hit them center mass.

Moving fast to minimize the risk of discovery, we rendezvoused with the others at the main doors to the engine coolant control compartment, ready to assault our primary objective, when a shout behind us made all four members of our team turn at once.

Fournier moved left and squeezed off four rapid shots, which served to force our ambushers back into cover and, importantly, to allow us the time to take the advantage from them. I went low behind him into the sparse cover of a doorframe and popped up high to deliver two shots to the chest of a woman running for cover on the opposite side which would give her a better angle on us. She dropped, a strangled cry coming from her mouth as her jaw locked and she jerked on the deck. But I didn’t have time to feel satisfaction because we were outnumbered three to one and we had our backs to a dead end.

“Valdez! Get that door open!” I barked, pointing at the door to the coolant control room in case it wasn’t plainly fucking obvious which door we needed open.

Opposite me, West was thumping rounds downrange with an accuracy that made me jealous, and in front of me Fournier was popping off rounds and cycling his weapon like the professional he was. Valdez popped the door and called it out, so I slapped Fournier’s shoulder and popped out to hammer five shots down the gangway to give myself the covering fire to run low for the door.

Valdez burst through the door with me, both of us with our guns up, but nobody was inside.

“Clear inside,” I said over the comm, returning to the doorway to lay down suppressing fire for West and Fournier to retreat to our line.

“Get that fucking door sealed,” West called out as she backed in and sent two final shots down the gangway.

“We’ll be locked in,” Valdez argued, but I was already overriding the locking mechanism ready to fry it when the doors closed.

“Alternative exit via maintenance hatch,” Fournier said, pointing at a line of square covers on the wall beside the main control panel before adding, “setting the shutdown sequence now.”

I finished with the door, hearing rounds thump into the other side of it but unworried that anything would penetrate.

“We’ve got maybe sixty seconds before they manually crank it,” I warned, but Fournier was already uploading the coolant kill program as Valdez and West tore open the maintenance hatch.

“Got it,” Fournier called out. I retreated to the hatch with my gun still facing the doors and signaled for him to go ahead of me. Trying to lift the hatch so our escape route wasn’t obvious, I had to back in, knowing that there’d be twenty meters of tunnel I’d have to traverse backward until I could turn around at a crawl-space junction.

“Keep up, Barton!” West warned. I didn’t respond and just kept shuffling backward blind as fast as I could in a damn void suit with a weapon in my hand. I made it, banging my helmet hard enough to make my ears ring when I spun around and followed the others. Behind me, I heard the hatch pop open, heard shouts, and felt the impact of rounds against metal but we were already gone out of sight.

Another minute of fast crawling and running took us to a lower-deck airlock from a maintenance shuttle bay, and we huddled as Valdez placed a charge on the override controls. Locking arms together, we counted it down and braced before the charge could set off the emergency override and the small bay violently decompressed to launch us out into the void.

The plan was to try and stay together as one until a stealth boat could pick us up, and even more than being shot at, this part frightened me the most.

“Three, two, one,” Valdez called out.

“All units, all units, end of exercise. Repeat: ENDEX, ENDEX, ENDEX,” a voice announced over the comm channel. I relaxed and let go of the others. I’d been gripping onto them so hard it was like I actually believed we were going to exfil through a forced decompression. In my ear, callsigns acknowledged the order to end the exercise, and I popped the seal on my suit to take off the helmet.

Fournier grinned beside me, his bushy beard sporting the worst kind of helmet hair I think I’d ever seen, but West was scowling.

“What the fuck happened?” she demanded. “Where the hell did they come from?”

“Doesn’t matter. All that does is that they ambushed you and none of you were hit. Fournier, what the fuck was that out in the void? You looked like a drunk tryin’ to fuck a road sign… Listen, the op went loud, but you did the job and got out. I call that a win,” a gravelly voice we all knew well announced. “You did good, kids. Now tell me what you could’ve done better.”

* * *

An hour later I was still in the void suit while we war-gamed the operation with multiple different, thrown-in scenarios. Rank wasn’t a thing, because in small Odin teams, seniority and leadership wasn’t an automatic right of rank. Here we all had a say, no matter if you were an army captain or a marine corps sergeant. West was an army captain and in charge of our team, but as abrasive as she was to deal with, she was an efficient leader and I liked her.

“Alright,” that same gravelly voice said quietly to shut us all up. “Go hit your racks and parade at zero-seven-hundred.”

I looked at my watch, realizing we’d stayed up well into the night picking apart the training boarding exercise and that left me about three hours of proper rack time if I went right away, but I knew I was still too hyped to sleep.

“I mean it, Barton,” Command Sergeant Major Landry drawled at me. “I know that look on your face; it’s the same look you had when you first arrived on Hades. Now get some sleep or I’ll make you regret it tomorrow.”

Chapter 1

Barton

Colony Planet Outpost

The journey from my posting to Hades took me almost four weeks. I had a little over two weeks leave before the transport was scheduled to take off, and I spent most of that running around in full gear and a pack with plenty of encouragement from the other marines of the company. Some of it was genuine, but as I hadn’t served with these guys, I knew a lot of it was because they didn’t like the fact I was leaving, like I was better than them or something. The corps is a tight, and sometimes—dare I say—an inbred family, and some people don’t like to see anyone leave.

On top of the time and attention I spent on my fitness, I had to allow for plenty of sleep to recover from getting too close to yet another orbital bombardment. As far as hobbies went, mine fucking sucked.

The guys tried to involve me in getting drunk with them the night before I shipped out, which was nice of them, so when I declined, they did their best to convince me, which ended up in a lieutenant losing his shit at them for making too much noise.

After slipping out of the barracks before breakfast to wait at the landing pad, I climbed up the rear ramp of the transport without a backward glance.

I was happy to be off that rock. I was happy to be away from the guard rotations of watching the British prisoners of war and listening to their shit about the rations and conditions. My response had always been pretty simple, even though I wasn’t an asshole about it.

If they didn’t like staying here, they shouldn’t have come in the first place. I knew that was a little harsh, because it wasn’t as if the Combined States Marine Corps exactly consulted me before sending us off to the ass-end of nowhere to watch a pile of rocks or shoot at alien scavengers coming too close to our outposts.

No, I didn’t spare the planet a backward glance because I was done with it, and because there was no way in hell I was coming back to the company. That much I knew for sure.

Mac had given me plenty of intel on what I was about to go through, but the advice was more generalized and not what I was expecting. He gave me concepts to live by, whereas I was hoping for more along the lines of dos and don’ts for SOG selection.

First stop after the transport shuttle was a supply convoy that hit the jump lane right away, as if they didn’t want to hang around in outer system space for long. That was a smart move, given how the British were picking off anything small or lightly defended and a few times I’d heard of NRC fleets just dropping out of lanes and blasting a planet with orbital strikes or trying to hammer a comm waypoint station.

Their push on the system had been beaten back pretty easily, or so I’d heard, because they’d relied on intentionally shitty intel and hadn’t committed enough resources to get the job done.

If they’d spared even one tub capable of orbital support, they’d have just rolled over us and we’d be the ones locked up complaining about the rations.

That didn’t mean they’d given up, and the intel had anything up to six stealth boats hunting in the sector to harass and pick off targets of opportunity. I half expected to hear about them combining their strength to hunt something larger, doing the whole wolf pack thing, but it seemed more like they were just popping up like small-time pirates before they disappeared again.

Either way, the tactic was solid because it meant we had to station a battle group in the area. That meant it wasn’t on the main line somewhere else in the galaxy, so it stretched our forces even thinner.

I wasn’t exactly sure when I started paying attention to these things. Reading intel reports that didn’t directly relate to my posting was an officer thing to do, and they only did that because they wanted to impress some other officer to get ahead.

I guessed what I’d been through over the last few months woke me up a little, and made me pay attention to what was happening outside my own squad.

Given how the supply ship I’d been booked passage on wasn’t a CS military vessel, I was treated like any other passenger. That meant if I wanted to get a sleep pod, I’d have to transfer the necessary dollars and that pissed me off.

Sleep was something other people paid me to do, not the other way around.

That meant I spent long days sitting in the cold on a rack that was about ten percent shorter than me because I didn’t feel like spending a month’s wages on a week in a tube about as old as I was. I tried to find somewhere to work out, but the ship wanted to charge passengers to use the small gym the crew had set up. I was glad I didn’t fork out for that too, after I found out that the gym was about the size of the cabin I’d been given.

Out of boredom mainly, I did hundreds of pushups, sit ups, and as many chin ups as I could manage a day. From what Mac had told me, that wasn’t a bad thing and he reckoned he must’ve done about a hundred thousand pushups during selection and training for SOG.

After we hit Midway Station, there was about thirty minutes to make the connecting transport back toward the inner systems, and luckily these guys did have sleep tube allocations for us.

I say us, but me and the other five guys that waited in line at Midway departures to board the transport didn’t talk to each other much. It was weird, because it was obvious we were all going to the same place for the same thing, but nobody wanted to be the first to admit it in case they looked like they were the loudmouth or the one with loose lips.

I mean, there was a war going on, so it already felt weird enough going closer to home to train instead of getting involved in the fight.

If I’d had a little longer on Midway, I might’ve been tempted to swing by the SOG area and see if any of my guys were still there. I didn’t because I didn’t have the time, and besides, I doubted any of them were still there. Plus, I’d feel like a massive douche canoe, just sticking my head in to say hi on my way through to try out to be one of them.

I wasn’t one of them, but I knew word had spread after what went down on… shit, I still can’t remember the name of that back-ass colony planet that everyone just called Ground Zero, but when a grunt gets taken along for the ride and ends up taking out almost an entire team of NRC spets assholes, people tend to hear about it.

Now I was under no illusions that what I’d done in any way meant I was owed anything. In fact, the simple invitation to attend selection was more than I’d hoped for, even if I hadn’t known it was what I wanted at the time, and I sure as hell wasn’t planning on messing it up with anything like, “Don’t you know who I am?” coming out of my mouth.

So anyway, there we were, none of us talking, like we were all either too badass to waste our time or just too scared to be the one to crack first.

Don’t say anything, I told myself. Don’t you do it… I’m warning you, you fucking moron, Don’t you say a goddam wor—

“Shit, the weather this time of year, am I right?” I asked out loud in the most deliberate attempt to start comedy small talk I could imagine. Two guys laughed but kept their faces turned away. A couple others tried to pretend they couldn’t hear me, but I got three solid I’m-hard-as-fuck stares from the others.

There’s them assholes, my brain announced to me in an offensively southern accent for no good reason I could imagine.

Luckily, there wasn’t much time to interact when we got onboard. There was the good, old-fashioned safety brief where we were told not to lick live wires, not to try entering the engine compartment during a hard burn, not to try operating the airlocks by ourselves in transit, and all the other dumb shit that you think nobody could ever possibly be stupid enough to try; only you know that if it it’s in the safety brief, then some asshole did it at some point.

After that we had about an hour and forty to get our shit stowed before the ship and escorts hit the jump lane. I decided on stowing my gear, making sure I took the consumables out of my pack so I didn’t wake up to some nasty-ass smell that would never leave me, and went in search of a final meal before I went to sleep.

It had to be a light meal, otherwise I’d be digesting it when I woke up and nobody needed to be around that kind of gas. I grabbed a pudding cup and a plastic spoon from the chow line and dropped onto a bench.

One of the guys who smiled at my lame joke earlier dropped himself right opposite me and spooned the rim of his pudding cup with a methodical precision.

He was tall and dark skinned, but not at all muscular from what I could see through his cammies. He was a marine like me, only he wasn’t some basic grunt but a MARSOC guy.

“Yeah, supposed to be like, ninety degrees or something by now,” he said, not looking at me and picking up on my earlier attempt at humor.

I smiled and wiped my right hand on my thigh and offered it to him.

“Barton.”

“Constantine,” he answered, shaking my hand with strong, bony fingers. “I know who you are.”

My face must’ve dropped because he laughed.

“I cannot confirm or deny any of the events on the planet known as Ground Zero,” I recited, just like I’d been told to by the company CO and the guy who refused to admit that he was from the IOA. I knew they’d sent a few guys after me to get me to talk about it so they could kick my ass out with a non-disclosure agreement they’d forced me to sign, but I’d had my chance to walk away from the corps clean with money in my pocket and I’d turned it down, so I wasn’t going to screw up.

“Relax, I’m not asking for details. Just wanted to say you did a good job from what I heard, and we like hearing shit like that.” He tapped two fingers of his right hand against the Raiders insignia on his arm, which made me fight down a wave of embarrassment at the compliment.

I opened my mouth and hesitated.

“I know, you cannot confirm or deny anything. I get it. Eat your pudding cup unless you want the worst indigestion ever in a couple weeks.”

I did, and we both walked out toward the sleep tubes, where I looked around the room before I lay down.

I got a friendly wink from Constantine and two glares off others before I lay back and waited to wake up at the other end.

Or not. It depended on whether our enemies got lucky and blasted us out of the sky.

* * *

Now I used to think that the whole Hades thing was propaganda bullshit designed to make us mere mortals fear and respect the SOG. The few guys who’d been there and come home to their units, with a dozen excuses as to how they could’ve made it through if only blah and blah had or hadn’t happened, told stories that smelled a lot like bullshit.

After sitting and nursing a coffee for about half an hour while my body got used to being awake again, and while I waited for the sensation of wanting to throw up and shit my pants at the same time to go away, I grabbed my gear and filed off the transport to the shuttle for the ride to the surface, where I stepped out into what felt like a hundred and ten degrees and about fourteen thousand percent humidity.

Other guys were gasping at the switch from the permanent cold you felt being in space, and I tried not to let it show that the switch in weather was literally taking my breath away. Luckily, the troop transport waiting to take us away from the LZ was air conditioned, but I could still feel my skin underneath my cammies prickling with uncomfortable sweat.

Ignoring it like that tiny amount of practice could prepare me for the discomfort I was going to face for however long I was there, I said nothing and just watched the electrical storms boiling the red-and-purple sky over a distant mountain range.

The transport drove into a hangar and the doors slid closed behind it, shutting off the red hue of the sunlight, if I could call it that, and plunging us into artificially lit familiarity.

We filed out, still none of us exchanging a word, as another group walked out of a door and fell in with us.

No calls for attention, no NCOs screaming orders, just a quiet expectation that we would listen if we wanted to be there.

“Welcome to training and assessment facility Hades,” a growling voice announced. All eyes twitched to lock onto the speaker, who I expected, from his voice at least, to be about six-four and big enough to eat me for a light snack. What I saw was a thin guy about five-eight with a solid jawline that looked like it had ten confirmed kills by itself.

“My name is Command Sergeant Major Landry, CS Army. I am the senior drill instructor on this site. You will be introduced to the other members of my team in due course, but for the next three days, this facility will be your home. You will undergo medical and psychiatric assessments to ensure you are fit to participate in selection.”

With that, another of the instructors started along the front rank with a clipboard and each person gave their name. I was in the middle of the second rank, so I watched each person and tried to guess what their background was. Out of the forty people there, I saw eight women, which surprised me because I was expecting a higher ratio. Women had been on the front lines of all military arms since my great grandfather’s time, and with two women part of Odin Nine-Five, I’d expected more.

The clipboard guy reached me finally and asked for my name, so I told him.

“Barton… Barton, Bro—ah, got you,” he said, stepping to the next guy who gave his name. That was it. No demand to know my branch or specialisms, just tick my name off a list and good to go. When that was done, the lead instructor guy cleared his throat and spoke again.

Once more, no shouts to listen up, just the quiet expectation that we possessed the self-discipline to want to be there.

“At no point unless directed will candidates venture outside of this compound. All DIs will be addressed as ‘Sergeant’ with the exception of myself who you will call me ‘Command Sergeant Major.’ The atmosphere and weather conditions here are harsh and can change rapidly, as some of you will no doubt find out soon enough,” Landry warned, giving me my first reminder that they expected most of us to fail. “Instructions will be posted on the board inside the barracks, and it is your responsibility to follow them, not the responsibility of my instructors to tell you where to be.”

With that, he walked off, leaving forty confused candidates unsure if they’d been dismissed or not.

Fuck it. I picked up my ruck before heading for the door. As if I’d started some kind of herd movement, everyone else started heading for the door at the same time, causing a bottleneck behind me while they all tried to pretend they weren’t following the crowd.

I owed Mac for that one. He told me that the instructors were assessing everyone from the second they arrived. It was no good switching on the professional attitude when it was game time, because you had to show that all the time. You had to think for yourself but not be out for yourself. You had to win but you had to be a part of the team.

It was mainly confusing existential shit, but if the advice told me nothing else, it had already put me in the right mindset.

I’d just grabbed a bunk near but not too near the door and dropped my gear there when one of the instructors walked in the barracks and announced that we had to stow all our personal gear and report in groups of six to the quartermaster. He slapped a hand on the screen as he left, and people rushed to it like they were checking for their exam results and not to see who was in which group to get gear.

It was in alphabetical order, which made sense, so I was the first name in the second group. I watched as a guy whose name tape said he was born to be first on any alphabetical list called out the names of the other people in his group, like he was taking charge.

The guy, Aaranovitch, was in army uniform and spoke like an officer, like rank made any difference until he’d passed selection. He led his group away like an eager little sheepdog fussing at the others behind him.

Feeling the mattress depress behind me, I looked over my shoulder to see Constantine sitting on my bed like he owned it and wearing a smile.

“How do you like it so far?” he asked.

“You mean the dry heat or the information overload?”

He laughed but didn’t press for an answer, leaving only a short silence before the first group returned carrying a stack of folded cammies.

“Next group,” Aaranovitch barked, making me dislike him a little more. I got up and made my way out of the barracks to follow the easy signage on the walls directing us to the quartermaster. I gave my name again and the guy behind the counter turned to find a prepared stack of gear which he dropped on the counter in front of me and looked to the next guy.

I hung back to wait for Constantine, who was two people behind me, and nodded to the full racks of uniform stacks.

“There’ll be two groups,” he told me before I’d even asked the question.

“Eighty of us?” I asked, wondering how the hell they were going to weed out so many people from such a large group.

“Trust me, we’ll lose a lot of those over the next forty-eight hours,” Constantine said with a laugh.

“You’ve been here before?” I asked as we walked.

“A year ago. Fell and busted my knee two days before SERE phase.”

“Ouch,” I said, not sure what other response I could give.

“You can say that again. Had to drag myself halfway down a mountain to get extracted. Spent a month in a regen cast after that and had to get my fitness back. Been waiting ever since.”

“They invited you back?” I asked, just to make conversation.

“Sure did. Looks like you got invited a little quicker though…”

“I…”

“Relax, marine, I’m just busting your balls. You’re here regardless but staying is on you and nobody else.”

I was sure he’d meant that to come out a little different, but it made me feel like I’d somehow cheated the system and just how inadequate I was for the job would come out pretty soon.

Chapter 2

Barton

Special Operations Group Training and Selection Facility HADES

What followed, after stripping down and putting on some seriously crunchy cammies that felt like they’d been washed with glue, was the most thorough medical examination I’d ever experienced.

Seriously, the guy who did it was on a first name basis with me by the end because we’d been through so much together.

He rated me fit, which made me think the medical was a simple pass or fail thing, and I asked him what was next.

“Check your board,” was all he told me as he tidied away his instruments ready to violate the next person in so many intimate ways.

Out in the corridor on the way back, I saw a door open and a woman step out. Her cheeks were already flushed pink when she saw me but somehow my presence made her pissed off and it showed on her face.

Now, even though we were all wearing unmarked uniform, you couldn’t help but pick up a sense for people’s branches and ranks after serving for a while. Even though I couldn’t place what she was, I picked up on the officer vibe like it was written in neon. I gave her a nod and set my eyes to the front to make my way back to my cot. With nothing to do in between tests and examinations, I made sure I slept as much as I could because I was pretty sure I’d be going more than a few days on an hour or two of sleep a night.

Assuming I passed the psych eval, that was.

* * *

“And tell me about your parents,” the shrink asked, like that was going to open a can of worms or something. I told her how they were still happily married after thirty years and how they’d both run off on an adventure as soon as I left home and didn’t need them there for me any longer. I explained how they went to work off-world together while they still claimed they were young enough to enjoy a second life.

She made an annoying noise and wrote something down on her tablet, like it was relevant that I didn’t have a traumatic childhood.

“And events on the colony planet, BG-192, tell me about that,” she said.

“I cannot confirm or deny—”

“Sergeant Barton, I assure you I’m cleared to know the answers to the questions I need to ask you. The fact that I know about your medical history and the events that took place on that planet should tell you something,” she said with an enforced patience I found annoying.

“Sorry, ma’am, but I’m not at liberty to discuss it,” I said stubbornly.

She let out a sigh that told me I was expectedly boring her and tapped at a comm panel on the table beside her chair.

“Doctor Grant for Lieutenant Colonel Masterson,” she said, eyes still fixed on me. The voice on the other end asked her to hold and the line clicked a few times before a female voice answered.

“Masterson,” it said efficiently, like the colonel didn’t have the time to waste on things like saying hello.

“Colonel, it’s Doctor Emily Grant with marine Sergeant Barton. I need him to hear from you that he has clearance to discuss certain matters that are subject to a non-disclosure order.”

“Sergeant Barton, my name is Lieutenant Colonel Susan Masterson, CS Air Force assigned to SOGCOM. The agreement you signed regarding events on BG-192 and the subsequent mission where you were attached to Odin Nine-Five do not hold you in this setting. You are permitted to discuss any and all aspects of those missions within that room with Doctor Grant. Do you understand?”

“Yes ma’am,” I answered, back straight in the soft couch even though she couldn’t see me. The shrink thanked her and cut the call, turning the smile back on me like she’d won a round or something.

“Where do you want to start?” I asked.

* * *

We took a break for lunch. We took another break around two in the afternoon, after which she brought coffee back to her office and ended up calling it a day by four.

I was fine, but she seemed to get more and more worn down by me recounting the events. The last question of the day threw me, because I knew there was no easy way to answer it.

“That man, Komarov, how did you feel when you killed him?”

Shit. Do I tell her I was happy I’d killed the piece of shit? That he was a murdering asshole and it was my job? Do I say it was him or me, and that I’m glad I survived?

“If you’re wondering how to answer that, Barton, I’d recommend that you just say the first thing that comes to mind,” she said, seeing the battle raging on my face.

“I’m glad I killed him,” I said before my brain could pull me back.

“Did you enjoy it?”

“What? No, I didn’t mean that… I… Look, he was going to kill me. He’d already tried to kill pretty much all my team and he was going to kill a whole lot more—indirectly—if he got away from me. So yeah, I’m glad he’s dead but I don’t get off on killing people.”

I took a few breaths to steady myself because I’d gotten wound up by the question. I knew why she asked, and I knew why the answer was important, but I couldn’t help that it got under my skin.

“How many confirmed kills do you have, Barton?’ she asked gently, eyes cast down to her pad.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” she asked, eyes lifting up to watch me through her eyebrows.

“I mean, I know how many people I’ve killed but I don’t know how many of those… other people I took out. Wasn’t exactly the environment you could keep count, you know?”

“And your combat footage wasn’t reviewed?”

“It didn’t record. Some kind of interference shut the link down.”

“So let’s talk about what you do know. The people, how many?”

“Eight,” I said straight away. “Two of those hand-to-hand and the rest I shot.”

“And how do you feel about that?”

There it was. The question. How do I feel about killing people?

“Not great, but I don’t regret it. It had to be someone, and it was me because I was there. I’m happy that they didn’t kill anyone else.” I shrugged like it was that easy to explain. I knew what she was getting at, because I’d heard more than a few guys throw around their confirmed numbers like a damn resumé, like somehow that made them more dangerous than someone who hasn’t been in the situation where they had to kill more than half a dozen people inside an hour.

I wasn’t like that and I couldn’t explain why, but I hoped I got that across to her.

* * *

Sitting on my cot after breakfast the next morning, I watched as the board flashed up names and instructions every few minutes.

“Candidate Myler, bring all personal gear and report to CSM Landry, room 214.”

We watched as Myler, a guy I had barely laid eyes on in the last day and a half, left the barracks and didn’t return.

“Candidate Anselmo, bring all personal gear and report to CSM Landry, room 214.”

Another guy, all gym muscles and brooding, went out the door and didn’t come back either. This went on for over an hour until a third of the group was gone.

“Looking good so far,” Constantine said as he dropped his pack onto the now vacant bunk beside mine and opened the locker to put it away.

“Not for everyone,” I answered, just as the soft beep indicated another name was showing on the board.

“Oh shit,” Constantine said, his eyes glued in the direction of the screen. I turned, seeing something that made my heart fall out of my ass.

“Candidate Barton, report to CSM Landry, room 214.”

“Shit,” I hissed, rolling to my feet and opening my locker to grab my pack before Constantine stopped me.

“Doesn’t say to bring your gear.”

I checked again to see that he was right, taking that as a glimmer of hope that I wasn’t getting canned before I’d even had a chance to prove myself. As I walked, I tried to reason with myself, justifying the fact that I was getting sent home by way of the injuries I’d received or something—anything—that made it something I had no control over.

I knocked at the door of Landry’s office marked simply with the three numbers.

“Come,” he said from inside, sounding like a robot. I guess dashing people’s career hopes on the rocks like he’d just done for the last hour plus made you put up a wall.

“Barton, siddown,” he said as he leaned back in his chair and eyeballed me. I sat, kept my mouth shut, and waited.

“Your psych eval raised questions,” he said. It wasn’t a question, and as a statement it was a little incomplete. I didn’t offer any answers which made Landry smile briefly.

“That’s the problem with civilian specialists in my opinion. If they’ve never been in a position where they had to kill someone, then it’s hard to understand, you know? The textbooks say one thing, but I wanted to look you in the eye and see for myself.”

“See what, Command Sergeant Major?”

“If it’s revenge you’re after.”

“No, it is not,” I said, looking him dead in the eye. “Did I fail the psych-eval, Command Sergeant Major?”

“No, you did not, but flags were raised,” he told me.

I said nothing, waiting to see if any of those flags were about to be shared.

“You want to know my secret, Barton?” he asked as he rocked back in his chair, surprising me with the switch. “My secret is that I am here selecting and training new recruits to SOG when all I want to do is get back out there and be part of the fight. I don’t mind telling you this, and it ain’t much of a secret, but we need to field another fifteen Odin teams by the end of the year to cope with the additional demand and expected losses. I should be leading one of those teams, but I am not, so the next best thing I can do is make sure I’m sending the right people out there to fight. Are you the right people, Barton?”

“Keep me on the course and I’ll do my best to prove that I am,” I promised him.

He held my gaze for a second past comfortable and dismissed me back to barracks without another word.

Chapter 3

Barton

Hades

That afternoon we were called back to the quartermaster where we were issued with an army ruck and more gear. When we got back to the barracks there were DIs in there ready to search our gear and take away every piece of tech we had. No watches, no tablets, no GPS, nothing. The rest of our gear was then locked away so all we had was what they gave us.

“On the line at twenty-hundred,” one of the DIs barked on his way out of the door. I didn’t waste any time and started to set up my new, unfamiliar gear. I was glad they hadn’t issued us all new boots because I didn’t think my feet would forgive me for breaking in a new pair when my newest pair had only just yielded.

“You done much ruck-running before?’ Constantine asked me.

“A little on build-up training before. Not a lot.”

“Then it’s about to become your friend,” he told me with a smile I didn’t much like the look of. He caught my look and smiled wider. “You ever been sweating in the humidity one minute and found your eyebrows frozen still another minute later?”

“Can’t say I have,” I admitted, wishing I’d taken the warning about the weather on Hades a little more seriously.

No matter how advanced the human race got, no matter how technologically advanced we were over our forebears, for some reason the military always came down to running somewhere carrying enough weight to make you shorter.

We hardly needed any tech, because all we had to do was follow the beacon on the back of a transport truck that had brought us out to the middle of nowhere and not fall behind.

Each of us had a chemlight strapped to the top of our packs, which was useful because a fog had rolled in to screw with our vision. It wasn’t dark, not in the conventional sense people thought about when they were used to our actual sun, but more of a really dark red instead of the bright red of what they called daylight.

It was like this place seemed to flip a switch in the evening and go to emergency lighting, only imagine that emergency lighting was all you had to see by when a building was on fire and you were trying to find your way out through thick smoke and carrying everything you owned.

To make life even more enjoyable, the track we ran on had a light covering of grit, so it felt like we were running on sand. There was no bounce when your boots hit the dirt, which meant that every step had to be a fresh start to gain the momentum we lost just sinking all that physical energy into the ground.

I think of all things, though, the most fun I had was running in the dark on sand with the stink of sulphur up my nose. Seriously, it was like we were inside a fucking active volcano or something.

At first, I kept up with the front runners, all of them tall and confident, as if this was exactly the kind of shit they ate for breakfast, but after a while I dropped back to the middle of the pack and kept my eyes on the ground in front of me. I was glad they’d locked away my watch because I’d have been tempted to check how long we’d been running for, and that would probably have depressed me a little.

It felt like maybe three or four hours, but I guessed it was more like thirty minutes.

Not having time to refer to, it was just an exercise that had to be done until we were told to stop. I knew what it was, and I knew it wasn’t a physical exercise but a mental one.

If we weren’t physically fit enough to do it, then that was an automatic fail, I guessed, because a high level of fitness was just a side effect of being the best, right? But if we couldn’t handle the mental pressure or the uncertainty, then how would we cope on mission?

Twice the DIs called halts and checked us off, told us to rehydrate in case anyone was dumb enough to think they didn’t need to, before they started us off again ahead of the support vehicle bringing up the rear.

Going by how my body felt more than by my brain’s guesswork of the time passing, I think the first guy dropped at the eight-mile mark.

I watched his foot land just that little bit wrong and his ankle roll over with a crack I heard over my own heavy breathing.

“Injury!” I called out, stopping before I ran over the poor guy and bending down to help him get his ruck off his back so he could lie flat. His eyes were screwed up with the pain, but I knew the pain he was feeling was more than just the injury. He was out and he knew it.

I dragged his pack to his legs and tucked it under the injured ankle to rest upon just as the nearest DI stopped beside me.

“You a medic?” he asked.

“No, Sergeant, I—”

“Then fuck off,” he said, shouldering me aside. Other DIs yelled at me to catch up with the pack, which was harder than they made it sound. It was all I could do to maintain pace, let alone put on a burst of acceleration, but somehow, I managed it with one of the instructional staff calling out encouragement into my ear the whole way.

Okay, that came out sarcastic. I can see you imagining poor old me getting screamed at to catch up, about what a useless fucking maggot I was, and how little my dick must be, but the guy was actually encouraging me.

I caught up with the rest, dropping back into the middle of the pack and putting my head down again. The front runners had pulled away now, stretching the group out into clusters between the lead and support trucks.

It was one of those difficult choices, because nobody told us if we were being judged on who could make the run in the best time or if we were supposed to stay together as a unit. That meant that the fittest and most competitive candidates pushed ahead while the rest of us kind of huddled together like there was safety in numbers.

Three more went down on the run. Two with straight up exhaustion at the pace, falling so far back that they got pulled, and another who pushed too hard and ended up taking a nosedive to the dirt.

I watched the guy faceplant, nearly losing my footing at the sight of the impact and angled my run to stop by them just as another figure did the same. The DIs got there first, yelling for us to keep going while they started to administer first aid. I bumped the other figure who had gone to help by accident and both of us reeled away stumbling slightly.

I caught the expression then of the harsh woman I had pegged as an officer, and she let me know what she thought about it before she set herself straight and pushed on ahead of me.

At the next stop I leaned my ruck against the rock face that the road seemed to be cut through, so I didn’t have to take it off. Taking it off would’ve possibly been the best feeling in the galaxy right then, but the depression I felt at even thinking about putting it back on afterward made me think twice about it.

It wasn’t the weight on my back, I could handle that shit all day; it was what it did on the way down. It squashed me like a loaf of bread, and the extra pressure on my hips pushed down on my knees, and in turn that made my feet feel like they were about a size wider.

It started off as heat, which in some places wasn’t bad because we went through cold microclimates every couple miles on this asshole of a planet anyway.

The heat went away after a while if you just ignored it, which I was pretty good at, but it was replaced by numbness. On treacherous footing, that wasn’t the best thing to live with—like trying out “The Stranger” technique when you were short on time—but when you stopped, the numbness went away and the heat came back with all its buddies.

Point being, stopping sucked about a bag and a half of dicks so I preferred to keep moving.

Gulping down water, I felt more than saw a figure approaching me as I did a weird, stiff dance on the spot. Expecting it to be Constantine or one of the DIs, I was surprised to see the woman I’d bumped into.

“Hey, sorry about—”

“Why did you do that?” she asked. I could tell from her voice that she was pissed, but she was also exhausted and that might not be the best combo.

“Do what?”

“Stop to help. I saw you do it the first time too. You a medic?” she asked in a tone that made it obvious she wasn’t used to having her questions go unanswered.

“No, the guy just went down hard is all. Looked bad.”

She hesitated for a few seconds like she was unsure what to say next. I filled the awkward silence with more loud gulps of water.

“He was from my unit,” she finally said. “Looks like he’s out now though. Name’s West.”

I looked at the offered hand and gripped it with my own. “Barton.”

She nodded and shook the hand before dropping it and turning away. She had officer written all over her, but in a way that said to me she was fighting against the privilege that came with it. It seemed like she wanted nothing more than to be one of the team but lacked the ability to fit in.

The run started again, this time beginning a long, slow incline that made my calves burn like a son of a bitch. If I thought that was bad, the long, slow descent that followed it made my quads consider writing a letter of complaint. Twice more the route went up and down, but by that point, I thought we’d been running for about a week.

Even some of the front runners were in sight now, slogging ahead with short paces just to keep moving, and that’s when I surprised myself.

Mac called it the second wind, but right at the point when I felt like my body had taken enough punishment, the pain just seemed to go away and unlocked a fresh reserve in its place.

Just when I was kidding myself that I could just keep going, I saw the ridgeline ahead of us explode in red light. It was so unexpected, so vivid, that I genuinely thought there was an explosion and damn near stumbled into cover before my brain lightly tapped me on the metaphorical shoulder and informed me that I was a fucking idiot.

Having managed not to dive into the roadside ditch at the sudden shock of daybreak, I realized we’d been on our feet all through the night. The next thing I realized was that the lead truck had stopped about five hundred meters ahead and the front runners were already climbing up the tailgate.

“Almost home,” I said out loud to myself, but around me I heard a chorus of noises and other words that told me the others needed to hear it.

Reaching the truck, we dropped our packs in the truck and climbed aboard ready for the drive back to our beds.

“Shower and PT gear. Breakfast in twenty,” a DI told us when we jumped stiffly down from the truck, and I think that was the moment I really understood the words I was told when I first joined the corps.

Why stand if you can sit, why sit if you can lie down, and if you can lie down, then why the fuck are you still awake, marine?

“What? We aren’t sleeping?” one of the gym bodies asked, stopping the DI in his tracks. Now any instructor in the marines, and I’m guessing it’d be pretty much the same in the other branches, when addressed like that and in that tone of voice would have the guy licking toilet bowls clean while singing the thank-you song but here… here was different. He just kept his cool and asked a simple question.

“Do you wish to withdraw from selection, candidate?”

“No, I just—”

“Then take a shower and put on some clean PT gear. Breakfast is in twenty minutes,” the DI said and turned very slowly, very deliberately back toward the exit.

“Fuckin’ asshole,” gym dude muttered when he was sure the DI was well out of earshot.

I grabbed a towel from my locker and dumped my pack before bending down to unlace my boots. A slap on the ass, soft enough to be playful but hard enough to sting, made me stand up straight with a snap like I was a lady of the pole or something.

Looking behind me, mouth still pursed in a stupid but sexy looking O, I saw Constantine smiling at me with West, the angry looking woman I’d spoken to earlier. Both of them pointed at the other and thought it was the best joke ever before making their way toward the showers.

I followed, stripping off my cammies under the water and wringing them out because I’d already seen the room with rails where uniform could be dried.

The showers were individual stalls like almost everywhere. We’d always had women on the front line, but gender equality and all that great stuff didn’t mean they had to shower with us trying to hide our little marines from them.

Scrubbing twice to get the sting of gritty sweat off me, I killed the water and dried off before wrapping the towel around my waist and walking to hang my now clean cammies on the drying rails. It’s all about economy of effort or some shit like that.

West walked out dressed the same as me, which got a few double takes until it was clear she didn’t give a shit what anyone thought.

What did I think? Well, she might look angry, but she had fucking great boobs. Seriously. If I’d known her better I’d have offered that as a compliment, but seeing as how I didn’t, I thought it best to keep my mouth shut and get my PT gear on.

Walking with Constantine, I voiced my excitement at getting some food after the night march.

“Whoa there, son. Go easy, okay?” he warned me.

“Huh?”

“You’re being sent for breakfast wearing PT gear,” he explained.

“Oh, got it,” I answered with a knowing nod, now realizing that I’d be running pretty soon. So I planned to take a light meal instead of eating as much bacon as I could fit on my tray to make up for last night. If they had it, that was. I was already expecting to find a selection of MREs from the unpopular section.

“You say that now, but you’re gonna struggle,” he said with a smirk and led the way ahead of me.

* * *

“Son of a bitch,” I complained as I picked up a molded tray and fell in line behind him.

“Air Force food on a timetable created by the devil,” Constantine told me as he picked out fruit and a yogurt to go with his juice and a bottle of water.

“Son of a bitch,” I moaned when I saw the fresh bacon, and oh my God, they had eggs Benedict. Fucking eggs goddam Benedict. I hadn’t seen those on a chow line since I accidentally walked into the officers’ mess and earned a month of fire watch as a reward.

“It’ll be your last meal,” West said behind my ear, a little too close so that I made an involuntary noise and bent my neck away.

“Gnyaaahwhat?”

“Did you do any research before you turned up here?” she asked.

“I, yeah, I mean I tried. It was a little short notice.”

“After breakfast we go right into the basic fitness test,” she said, picking up a juice for herself.

“And after that it’s the swim test,” Constantine added.

“You’ve both been here before?’ I asked as I glanced between both of them.

“We were both on the same course a year ago,” West said. “Dumbass here decided to go and break his damn knee, and my father selfishly decided that he’d die and leave me as executor of his will a few days after I shipped out here.”

“Couldn’t you have waited to go deal with that?” I asked before my brain could catch up with my mouth.

“Not when the bastard’s lawyer had a judge issue a summons. MPs showed up here to drag me off and it’s taken this long to convince army HQ at Midway to release me again.”

“Wow. So you were close?” I asked, my brain still not catching up to stop me saying something stupid.

“He was an asshole to the end. After the end, so it would seem. He was a navy colonel. JAG Corps. Blew his fucking stack when I got commissioned into the army.”

“I knew you were an officer,” I said.

“Captain, Eighth Infantry Brigade,” she said like it was no big deal.

“Sergeant, Marine Corps, Three-Five,” I answered.

“I know who you are,” she said with a smirk.

“Whadd’ya having?” the guy behind the counter asked. I threw caution to the wind and ordered the eggs Benedict because I knew I’d never forgive myself if I let those tasty little bastards go.

Sitting down with West and Constantine, I tucked into them with literally zero regrets as a guy walked by and stopped opposite me.

“You Barton?’ he asked. I couldn’t read his tone, so I looked up to gauge his expression. As soon as I caught his eye, he leaned down to offer me his hand.

“I heard what you did for my buddy on the march. Thanks, man.”

I shook the hand and let him go with a nod because I wasn’t sure what else to say.

“My my, you like to collect a rep everywhere you go, or is this a new thing?” West asked.

“Hey, I can’t confirm or deny—”

“Relax, hotshot. Nobody’s asking for your state secrets,” West said through a mouthful of fruit and yogurt. “Now eat your damned eggs before we have to pull you outta the pool and do CPR on you.”

Chapter 4

Midway Station

Barton had no way of knowing, but the majority of Odin Nine-Five had still been on Midway when he’d passed through. If he’d swung by and managed to get through the secure airlock doors to their little corner of the massive station, he’d have found almost all of the unit he knew, along with four other Odin teams.

He’d have received a warm welcome too, despite his self-doubt that he’d be the asshole to think their shared experiences made him one of them, and he’d have seen the curious trenching tool mounted over the bed of the unit CO, which would have made him smile because he knew not only how it got there but what it meant to the man.

That man, Major Mark Harlan, left the team area they called their compound and went up the freight elevator toward the heart of the station and headed for central command where the Combined States military’s most senior officers worked.

Inside that secure area, where he was checked and scanned multiple times with each layer of security he passed through, he finally provided his name and rank to a marine guarding a secure door and put his hand inside a biometric reader for confirmation.

When the light flashed green on the reader, the marine looked up at the black orb above the door and nodded. The door opened and Harlan walked inside to find a blur of activity as he entered the heart of the Midway sector’s intelligence hub.

“Major, good to see you again,” a voice announced. He turned to see the smiling face of Colonel John Desoto approaching him with two junior officers flanking his advance. The two men shook hands, their shared history obvious to anyone observing, as Harlan looked around the room appraisingly.

“Quite the setup you got going here, Colonel.”

“Well, you know, all-out fucking war tends to sharpen the mind and open up the coffers back home. You know I have people hot desking? When in the hell has Midway intelligence had so many staff they’ve had to share desks?”

“Well, war,” Harlan answered with a depreciating shrug.

“Yeah, and all that time we were asking for an increase of funding and they said it wasn’t in the budget.”

“If you were in charge of the galaxy’s military, wouldn’t you keep a few quadrillion dollars set aside in case you had to fund another war?”

“I wouldn’t have the people at the sharp end struggling for resources in the first place, which is why I tried to stay on the ground like any self-respecting grunt,” Desoto answered with a laugh as he jerked his head in the direction of a large corner office overlooking the bullpen.

“You want some coffee? Pearson, get us some coffee, would you?”

Harlan turned to see a tall, thin guy in the dress uniform of an army captain nod and spin away before he remembered to ask how they took it and swung back to check.

“Black with a little sugar, thanks,” Harlan answered, treating the man with a little more dignity than the colonel did.

“Guy’s a pain in my ass. Keeps asking me if he can do this and that… Whatever happened to independent thought? Don’t they teach that to officers anymore?”

“I had more than my fair share of independent thought,” Harlan laughed. “A little more than the army liked, truth be told.”

“Well, they sure as shit beat it out of Pearson there. Man’s afraid to take a piss without permission.”

“Maybe the captain is just a little in awe of the colonel, Sir.” Desoto turned his narrow-eyed, suspicious gaze on the major to see if he was being mocked.

“You trying to get in my pants, Harlan?”

“You gonna go Dutch on dinner if I am?” Harlan answered with a wink.

They reached his office and Desoto turned, smiling expectantly at the air force captain, who hesitated before making himself scarce.

“I swear, this place is filled with high-speed idiots. These kids have all the brains and none of the experience needed for the job. Where’s my experienced team guys, huh? Do none of them want to take a shot at running things?”

“That’s why we have you,” Harlan answered with his hands wide just as Pearson arrived at the door holding two mugs and grinning like he needed a treat for getting a double drink order right.

He placed the mugs on the desk and stood there smiling before Desoto had to say it out loud.

“You can go now, son.”

Pearson practically fled from the room as Harlan shook his head at the colonel.

“Anyway, where we at, sir?”

“Shit, Harlan. You had to come all the way up here to ask that? You need a damn briefing, you check the system like everyone else.”

Harlan shrugged and took a seat before picking up the coffee without creamer.

“I like it from the horse’s mouth. Less bullshit to sift through.”

Desoto sat and sipped his own coffee with a wince.

“Well, alright. We’ve got over a dozen colonies and two entire systems trying to declare peaceful independence like a bunch of pussies. Half of those are vital in either resources or location to us and our allies and emissaries have been dispatched to explain to them that they either stick with us or else they invite the NRC or the damn British to show up and take their place.”

The way he’d invested so much mockery into the title of emissaries made Harlan think the old colonel had even less respect for the politicians than he did for the clueless idiots who thought they could just opt out of galactic war with a note from their mom.

“And let me guess, they declared independence to us and the NRC, right?”

“Get that man a cookie,” Desoto answered like he was hosting a gameshow. “So now the Russians know what sweet spots to hit and that stretches us thin on too many fronts. Takes time to deploy all our available battalions to these places and we’re just hoping we get to them in time.”

“The strategically important ones, of course,” Harlan commented.

“Of course. What’s the point in reinforcing an unwanted target?”

“Exactly. Any of those in our sector?”

“Two. Another damn tungsten mining colony on some dustball that’s hotter than hell and a trading outpost comprising two planets and a station.”

“Wait, a station? Private corp?” Desoto smiled wryly with the coffee halfway to his lips and shook his head slowly.

“Government owned. Local magistrates took it upon themselves to listen to their people and declare cessation or some bullshit. I tell ya, it’s like Texas back in 2035 from what I’m told.”

“They have to know they can’t do that, right? I mean, the colony planets are another thing—especially if they’re private money—but a damn CS station? That’s some next level shit,” Harlan said.

“Probably hoping they’ll get lost amongst all the other shit, like the government’ll just forget they left a trillion-dollar project sitting out there generating billions in tax revenue each year.”

“Like putting your pen down and losing it but not caring because you have another pen?”

“And I thought I was the dinosaur. You still use a pen?”

Harlan shrugged to admit that he was old-fashioned in that way.

“Let’s see… what else? Oh, the NRC front has pushed back after they went all blitzkrieg on us, which means they’re either switching up tactics for some reason or they can't sustain it.”

“Or the switch-it tactic is a deliberate thing,” Harlan offered helpfully and earned an unimpressed look from the colonel.

“And I’m short of your guys as it is, without priority requests for SOG missions comin’ outta my ass,” Desoto finished.

“So, the lines are holding and both sides have taken a step back and we’re now planning covert missions instead of full offensives?”

“Pretty much, yeah. No way can both sides sustain all-out war on fifty different fronts. No, it’ll be another Cold War in most places while the real fighting happens in the shadows,” Desoto said tiredly.

“Any new developments from Ground Zero?” Harlan asked.

“None that I’m aware of. Whole system’s sealed up tighter than a quartermaster’s asshole and even the support crews are being screened with a comm blackout.”

“Nervous of NRC infiltration?” Harlan asked the obvious question.

“Like those sons of bitches don’t have history on the subject? Shit, son, they’ve been breeding spies that act and talk just like us for hundreds of years. Got whole towns on different colonies set up just like home, and then they send them off to work in civilian trade outfits with ID histories so good the algorithms can't spot a fake. You know this!”

“Yeah, but anyone actually seen a sleeper agent for the last ten years?”

“I know four of the assholes slipped their moorings and made a run for Ascension since we declared war,” Desoto answered with a knowing smirk as Harlan’s face registered shock.

“You’re shitting me!”

“Hand to God, Major, took a metric fuck ton of state secrets along with them. One was even on the admiral’s staff right here on Midway.”

“Holy shitballs. That means there must be twice that many still in place,” Harlan said dejectedly.

“Yeah. You don’t read that in the briefings.”

“So we’re screening everyone again? Checking comm logs and access records?” Harlan asked.

“Oh sure. Eighty thousand service personnel in this sector alone with over four hundred vessels. The boys and girls out there’ll have it done by lunch,” Desoto answered confidently without a hint of sarcasm evident on his face.

“Algorithms and targeting senior personnel in positions of unique trust?” Harlan asked, earning a sharp nod from the colonel.

“Best place to start before cascading down. Either way, the intel purge and shifting of forces and caches took ten days, which was five days too long if the NRC were ready to launch counteroffensives based on that intel. You see now why this place is packed?”

“I do, but I’m not sure why you’re running it, sir. I mean, didn’t navy intelligence have their own guy?”

“Uh-huh, only she’s just as buried as I am. Worse, actually, which is why I’m this side of the curtain as much as I am behind it.”

Harlan nodded and drank, losing himself in the gravity of the situation. He’d been young during the last conflict between the dominant Earth nations, only just qualified through SOG selection after three years in the marine corps and another three earning his commission through army intelligence.

He’d gone straight into action and hadn’t stopped for over a year, even when he lost his brother, and by the end of it when both sides agreed an official peace accord, he’d looked up only to find himself leading an Odin team of his own.

None of the original members of his command was still with him, as people tended to stay put for a year or two and then move on. Even since the last mission, he’d lost one of his support group pilots and Beth Coates had been seconded for another mission because Odin Five-Five required a marksman squad of four, which meant they borrowed the team snipers from the nearest teams to deploy fast.

That left him with his two marines and his army pilot on standby until they were needed elsewhere, which was what he was hoping the result of the face-to-face with Desoto would lead to.

“So… got anything for us?” he asked, coming right out with it as the subject hadn’t been raised yet.

“Matter of fact I have. I told you about the damn emissaries, right? Well one of the planets we really don’t want to lose is on the other side of an entire stretch that the damn Brits have staked out with stealth boats. Not common knowledge but we lost three vessels in the first attempt to get a ship there. Damn place declared itself a sovereign nation three weeks ago and sent the loyal government reps packing.”

“Bold move,” Harlan said, watching Desoto flick through various reports on his tablet with a frown until he found the one he was looking for.

“Ah, here it is,” he cleared his throat and faked a whiny voice that put Harlan in mind of some libertarian rabble rouser. “We the Undersigned on behalf of the People, formally declare the sovereign state of New Liberty Terminal to be outside and separate to the political connections of the Combined States Government… Can you believe this bullshit?”

“So you want us to escort the VIP and make sure the sovereign state recognizes their authority?” Harlan asked, ready to take any mission just to get off Midway when the fight was raging on far away.

“It’s more than that—I know what you’re thinking—we need to reinforce and resupply the planet with a division of troops and a carrier to maintain orbital protection, and we don’t have enough stealth vessels to carry men and equipment, so we’re throwing together a flotilla. Shit, truth be told, we need to occupy and hold it against our own damn people and the enemy.”

“A flotilla that looks too big for them to take on?” Harlan asked, not liking the way the colonel had used the term “throwing together” in that context.

“That’s the general idea,” Desoto said. “Stick a stealth boat in the middle of that with a team and the VIP on it and hope we don’t lose too many of the escort ships.”

“We can do that,” Harlan assured him. “I’ll need to get another guy but I can talk to the other team leaders when I get back downstairs.”

“That’s settled then. The flotilla is hanging out in deep space away from the jump lanes so nobody here sees what’s happening and lets the enemy know where to send reinforcements. I’ll have a briefing package built but between us. This damn planet is key. It controls the space around a three-lane intersection and has a half dozen mining colonies on the planet and the moons that would provide the NRC with a little too much raw material for our liking. This is the one—resources and territory—and we need to secure it.”

Harlan drained his coffee and stood to give Desoto a confident nod.

“We’ll do our part, sir.”

“Good. I know I can count on you.”

Chapter 5

Former Colony Mining Planet BG-192

“Ground Zero”

Days away from Midway station and the rapid preparations of Odin Nine-Five, the activity on and around BG-192 had reached fever pitch.

The admiral’s supercarrier had withdrawn, but a large number of ships from the African and Japanese fleets remained in the system to offer a layered defense, keeping the planet shielded from any attempted incursion while the CSS Forthright acted as the orbital platform running the whole show.

On the surface, under the leadership of representatives from the Combined States Intelligence Operations Activity, a protective dome had been erected over the alien object they had first thought to be a ship.

“Explain this to me from the beginning, only assume I’m not a doctor of science,” the man who called himself Smith said. Doctor Travis King tried not to let his annoyance show to the man two thirds his age. He hated the way the man walked around using the most obvious code-named anonymity, like he wasn’t even attempting a pretense to hide his real identity. He hated, too, that the science part of the science mission was being forced into the background in favor of weaponizing any of the alien technology for use against their enemies.

“The ship isn’t a ship. It’s a… a facility. A plant room of sorts,” King said.

“A facility that does what, exactly?” Smith asked.

“We’re not entirely convinced and assured of that yet, but we suspect at this point it might be a kind of terrafo—”

“The material the ship is made from, do we have the ability to replicate it yet?” Smith interrupted arrogantly.

“We’ve analyzed it thoroughly, sir,” another scientist said. “It’s got twice the strength of neosteel in the same thickness and we believe it has an ablative property to—”

“Didn’t ask for the specs, I asked if we can replicate it,” Smith interrupted again as if he was talking to an excited but annoying child. The scientist looked at King for help, but the older man shrugged as if to tell him to answer the question.

“No. I… I mean not yet…” he stammered after seeing the dangerous narrowing of Smith’s eyes.

“I need two samples of it large enough for other labs to replicate your work,” he announced without looking up from the tablet he was using.

“To go with the samples of the alien substance?” King spat before he could rein his tongue in. Smith looked up slowly to face him, wearing an amused look on his forgettable face.

“Is there a point you’re trying to make, Doctor King?”

“Merely an observation. The work we are trying to do here exists in a vacuum, and the answers you’re demanding might come faster if you allowed us to share our findings with other labs replicating the work to make the whole thing more streamlined.”

“Noted, Doctor, but we are intentionally erecting an information firewall between the respective labs to prevent replication of mistakes and scientific assumptions. They will conduct the test in the manner that they feel is right, and if you all get the same results, then…” He shrugged to finish, making his own point indecipherable.

Silence hung in the room for a few beats before Smith unfolded his legs and put the tablet down with slick, fast movements.

“Now, tell me your emerging theory on the terraforming concept.”

King was taken aback because he’d thought the man wasn’t listening, but the next words to come out of his mouth made it obvious he already knew before the meeting had begun.

“You expressed this opinion last week, only it’s taken until now for you to mention it.”

Cameras in the lab, King’s thoughts resounded in his head, as if he was embarrassed by his own amateur naivety.

“Simply put, we think the facility was placed here to terraform the planet using the liquid. It’s already proved to have a controlling effect on organic life.”

“For what purpose?” Smith asked.

“Excuse me?”

“For what purpose does the xenosubstance control organic life? How does that lead you to assume it is an attempt at terraforming?”

“We, err, we don’t know that yet,” King admitted.

“But surely you must have a theory or a hypothesis? Why else would the notion be a consideration?”

“Because… because the local organic life has begun processing other organic material on the planet which wasn’t noted on the initial pre-colony survey reports. Also, we’ve tested it on local fauna and found that it breaks that down…”

“And the humans affected by this fluid, they also changed their behavior, correct?”

King had to bite his tongue to hold back on saying that hundreds of people becoming mindless attack drones would be classed as a change in behavior in anyone’s book.

“From what we have seen, that’s very evident,” he said stiffly.

“But we don’t know for what purpose,” Smith declared, eyes cast down at the tablet again.

“We do not, on account of none of the infected bodies being available for study.”

“That’s not your concern. I need your team to concentrate solely on the facility and its purpose. An additional team of engineers has been dispatched here and they will deal only with the replication of the alien power source. Oh, and one last thing?”

King’s eyebrows went up to invite the impending order disguised as a request.

“I’m having three more vials of the liquid taken off site as we speak, just so you know the sample is going to be less than when you last saw it.”

“And am I permitted to know what for, Mister Smith?” King asked as he fought the urge to clench his teeth.

“No, I’m afraid you are not,” Smith answered with a smug smile before standing and leaving the room with his entourage trailing behind.

“What does that mean?” the scientist who had been cowed by the man asked King as soon as they were alone. King glanced up at the tiny surveillance camera in the corner of the room and shook his head almost imperceptibly before he answered that he didn’t know and didn’t care.

Leaving the room to return to their lab, King tapped at his own small tablet and surreptitiously showed it to him.

Human trials? Was all he’d written and he scrubbed the screen clear before anyone else could see it. That had to be the only reason for the questions and the removal of the liquid, he knew it; and he feared the consequences of something so unknown, so insidious in its nature, being used as a weapon against people.

* * *

Even further away in the depths of the citadel called Ascension Station, a war council comprised of NRC and European military leaders worked just as tirelessly as those on Midway.

The NRC ambassador there, a member of the ministry of external security and a former decorated soldier himself, walked through a sequence of locked and guarded doors where finally, after verifying his identity biometrically, he entered the most secure inner sanctum.

“General,” he said in greeting as his heels met and his head nodded once in a stiff, sharp bow.

“Mister Ambassador. I trust you bring good news to us?” the general rumbled.

“I do, Comrade. I bring news from the recently independent government of New Liberty Terminal. Their own government has refused their right to be recognized as an independent nation and they are seeking outside help to protect themselves.”

“When you say this, ‘outside’ help, what do you mean?” the general asked, his full attention now on the older man.

“It means they have reached out to various mercenary organizations but sadly, many of them do not wish to go against their own people,” the ambassador explained with a hint of pride at his expert engineering of the situation. “There is a Chinese outfit ready to provide a company of guards to help maintain this new sovereign nation.”

“What do you think, Victor? Are you ready to fake a dishonorable discharge and go mercenary?” the general asked, turning to the shadows where a wild-bearded man emerged into the light on hearing his name.

“So long as the General gives his word that I will be reinstated on our return,” Major Victor Komarov answered flatly. “After this, I still want revenge on the men who killed my brother. You promised me this, Ambassador.”

The general turned to face the older man and offer him an amused, questioning look.

“I gave you my word, Comrade Komarov, that I would do my best to find them.”

“And has the Ambassador kept his word, Victor?” the general asked pointedly.

“He tells me they are still on Midway, which is why I request transfer here ready for invasion.”

“You have my word on your reinstatement, Major Komarov. And perhaps when this mission is over, you will get your wish.”

Chapter 6

Barton

Hades

Basic fitness tests were a breeze. They weren’t even classed as exercise as far as I was concerned, but after a night spent humping through the dust and a heavy breakfast—no regrets—I had to admit to feeling that test for the first time since before I joined.

I mean, the clue was in the title, right? Basic? The test was designed to see if the people the recruiters dragged off the streets weren’t so fat that they couldn’t manage to tie their own boots.

When you considered where we were and the reason we were there, it made little sense to even use that test as any kind of metric. But given the circumstances, there were still two guys who were taken out because their muscles cramped up and they dropped.

After that it was right into marine corps territory. In the pool, in PT gear, to fetch a heavy brick from the bottom and walk it to the shallow end. I could not believe how many of the thirty or so remaining people abandoned the brick and came up gasping for air. I could do that shit all day, and if I could do it all day, then the guys who were obviously navy operators—obviously, because they pretty much got boners when it was time to get tested underwater—could do it all day and all night.

Now this might come as a surprise, but I can't swim for shit. I mean, I can swim, obviously, but it ain’t exactly what you call fast and it certainly is not pretty. An instructor once told me I looked like an epileptic drowning, which I thought was a little harsh, but I had to admit I did a lot of splashing for not much movement.

The SEALs, shit, they were gliding through the water so naturally they looked like penguins or something, and I was ashamed to see the people I’d pegged as army grunts outswimming me.

Swimming fifty meters holding that same heavy brick out of the water looked like a kid’s game when the damn squids did it, but at one point, a DI asked me if I was rescuing the brick or the brick was rescuing me. By the time I got it to the end of the pool and clung onto the edge so I could breathe and cough pool water out of my nose, I was pretty sure whatever bonus points I’d earned on the night march were spent.

Looking up, I saw Constantine, dripping wet and smiling, looking down at me with amusement that bordered on mockery.

“Fuck off,” I greeted him kindly.

“Ah, don’t be like that! Look on the bright side,” he said, nodding behind me.

I turned, my fingers slipping on the side of the pool as I moved, which dunked me back into the water. When I came back up, I saw two instructors pulling a guy out of the water by his arms.

It didn’t feel much like a bright side for me, but the selfish part of my brain reminded me that so long as I wasn’t the one being rescued, I might not be on anyone’s shit list for getting canned.

The pool party lasted until lunch when we were told to eat and be back on the line at eighteen hundred sharp. Having learned my lesson with the eggs Benedict—still no regrets—I ate a light lunch but made sure it was packed with the calories my body needed.

Washing it down with a coffee that was at least forty percent sugar, I racked out as soon as I hit my cot.

Now, what followed that was a bit of a blur. I think it lasted four days but equally it could have been six. A combination of night marches, PT in full gear, taking it in turns to carry four people’s rucks at a time, and usually uphill, became jumbled in my memory pretty fast.

It wasn’t just the physical side of things because I knew they hit us hard with everything they had just to see who couldn’t fight through the exhaustion and demonstrate an unbreakable will to be there; no, it was also the mental tests they threw in just to see if you were still present.

At one checkpoint, I dropped my pack and started chugging water down because we’d just climbed through an insane pocket of high humidity and I was close to sweating bone marrow. The planet decided, just because it could, to gift us a strong wind that was only about twenty degrees on the high ground above the Louisiana swamps.

I went from dying of heat exhaustion to shivering with cold in under a minute, and as my numb fingers were struggling to get another layer out of my ruck, a DI called my name.

“Here, Sergeant,” I answered, raising a hand and walking to him when beckoned. He knife-handed the shit out of me as he pointed to a mess of wires on what looked like a circuit board.

“You have exactly one hundred eighty seconds to organize those wires according to color,” he said, turning his back on me and walking away. I lost a few seconds staring at his back before I dropped to my knees and started to fumble at the most obvious wire as I tried to untangle it. He didn’t give me a color order, and as I was about to call out for one, my brain kicked me in the ear and told me to find out the damn answer for myself.

I turned over the board to find a sequence of colors on the side in the form of pieces of the wire taped to it. I lost a few more seconds getting that order right in my head before working fast to unravel the frustrating mess.

“Time!” the DI yelled right behind me when I’d only managed to make four pieces of the puzzle into neat coils.

There was no point in telling him I’d not completed the task, so I just stood and went back to my gear as instructed to carry on the march.

Those kinds of mental challenges continued, and just as I was starting to stress out that none of them was achievable, it dawned on me that they weren’t supposed to be. They were a test of listening skills, initiative, and to demonstrate staying cool under pressure. Mac had warned me that I needed to keep my cool during this phase but only then was it clear what he meant. Cagey bastard.

One guy withdrew himself after another puzzle where he couldn’t untie the little colored ropes, and instead of just accepting that he hadn’t achieved it, he roared and launched the thing into the rocks in pure frustration. He was asked in a very restrained manner if he wanted to retrieve the object but he turned on the DI and told him to get it his damn self.

Okay, he didn’t exactly quit on the spot but that little outburst got him invited to go home.

By the time that phase came to an end, only the first twenty beds in the barracks were occupied, and I wasn’t surprised that I was in one of them.

That sounds cocky as hell, but let me explain. I wanted to be there, and not for me but so I could be the best I could and do something to make a difference in this damn war that started because of something I got involved in.

I’d spent far too many nights awake wondering if there was anything I could’ve done differently so that the outcome might be peaceful. I’d even mentioned that to Mac when we spoke before I left, but he was straight to the point and pragmatic about it.

He’d told me that war wasn’t started by guys like us on the ground, it was started by politicians in different sectors pushing buttons with just numbers on the end of them. Those numbers were lives, civilians, resources… Anyway, point is, as much as I tried to beat myself up over it, I was there so I could do something good in a bad situation. I wasn’t there for me or my ego—those showboating guys had gone in the first week when they realized they weren’t the strongest or the fastest like they’d believed—and that set my head on straight.

Constantine was out right then, having his knee looked at by a medic because it had swollen up after the last run, but West was on the bunk to my other side reading a book with her feet elevated on a stack of folded towels to expose her blistered feet to the air.

“So, you’ve been here before, what’s next?” I asked, hoping for the scoop.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” she answered, turning the pages without looking at me.

“Really?”

“Really.” She dropped the tablet with a huff and half turned to look in my direction, “Listen, it’ll be landnav stuff for three days, after that—if you make it—it’ll be weapons qualification.”

“Got it,” I said, pretty confident of the latter but rightly concerned about the former. West must’ve sensed my unease because she let out another noise, like I was a younger sibling coming into her room to piss her off. She hissed as her feet hit the cold floor, then stood to pull a map and the issued compass from her locker.

“You do know how to navigate, right?”

I nodded. I knew how to do it from basic, but I’d never actually used the skill on account of being told where to go, what to do, when to eat, and when to shit for pretty much the entire duration of my service.

Chapter 7

Midway Station

SOG Barracks

“What in the shit-kicking Christ do these jerkoffs think they’re doing?” Mac asked after reading the mission brief and dropping the tablet on the table.

“What? I think waiting until the galaxy is in the middle of a war is the perfect time to reject any kind of military protection and hope that both sides will just leave you alone,” Mark answered with a stony expression.

“Yeah, right, like the NRC’s just gonna pass them by? No way they’re letting that system slide,” Anders said.

“Neither are we,” Mark added. “Plus, there’s a little legal issue of the fact that New Liberty Terminal doesn’t own the damn space station and a few of the mining operations are government backed.”

“Enter the lawyers,” Mac said, sitting back with a groan.

“Which will take years and won't even start until the war ends, by which time who knows who’ll own the planets,” Mark retorted.

“So, enter the politicians,” Edwards said, bringing the conversation back to their mission.

“VIP escort. Outstanding,” Mac agreed with evident sarcasm.

“If you prefer, you can stay here with your thumb in your ass,” Mark said, waiting for the man to indicate he was done complaining. Mac held his hands up briefly in mock surrender, allowing the conversation to move along.

“Where do I fit in?” Edwards asked. She was their only pilot on account of other members of Odin Nine-Five being seconded to other missions, and as the only special forces support group officer, her role wasn’t so easily defined.

“Deployment orders are for the team, so I guess you play shuttle pilot. I’d rather have you at the controls when we have to fly the VIP dirtside anyway,” Mark said, making Edwards nod and suppress a smile at not being left behind like she too often was.

She wasn’t an operator, in spite of the additional training an air force pilot would receive in her role, but she still liked to get close to the action where she could. That wasn’t a dangerous arrogance by any means; she wasn’t some rookie looking to rack up kills and earn a medal. It was more that she wanted to be close to the rest of the team to offer her assistance if they needed it.

“Besides, with Coates out, there might be an issue that we need a female on the ground with us,” Mac said.

When Edwards shot him a look that dared him to minimalize her gender, he made the same surrender motion with his hands.

“Hey, all I’m saying is I don’t feel too comfortable escorting a VIP into the ladies’ room and having to listen to her fart in the bowl while pretending I didn’t hear it,” he said.

“Why is that an issue? You don’t know the VIP is a woman,” Edwards said.

Mac picked up the discarded tablet again and swiped with his index finger while squinting at the screen. “Aubrey Sharpe.” He handed the tablet over, wearing a look of smug satisfaction.

“Yeah, that’s a unisex name,” Edwards said after glancing at the text and handing it back. Mac looked to Anders for support, but he shrugged in apology.

“She’s right, man. Could be either way. Maybe you’re thinking Aubrey?” he asked.

“Got it,” Mark said after searching on his own tablet. “Aubrey Sharpe, United Nations ambassador to… I don’t know where the fuck that is. Negotiated a peace deal… doctorate in politics… ah, here. It says “she” in one of these articles, damn gender-neutral language guidelines.”

“Told you,” Mac said smugly. “You get to listen to her fart in the bowl after all!”

“Fine, VIP is female. So, Edwards, you’re on the team if you want in. I’ll just have to inform Midway command, but with how strung out everyone is all over the sector, I don’t think they’d pull it,” Mark said.

“Back it up with a request to get Coates back?” Anders added, earning a sharp look from the pilot, who took it as him trying to push her aside. “Hey, don’t look at me like that, I mean if they reject it, he could do that!” Edwards relaxed a little but shot a look at Mark, who was frowning in thought.

“No, if I highlight it, they might brain fart and pull the plug on the mission, or worse, get Coates pulled from her secondment. I’ll just submit the deployment and not make an issue out of it unless they ask.” He looked at Edwards pointedly before he made his concerns clear.

“You will do everything I say though, right?”

“Sir, yes sir,” she said a little too mockingly for his liking, so she straightened up and gave him a serious nod.

“Fine, we need to hitch a ride on a destroyer in forty-eight, so clear your gear,” Mark said as he got up from the table.

They packed and repacked everything they needed, adding enough gear to outfit themselves twice over just in case, and spent an entire afternoon checking their weapons on the range. Once they’d finished, they stripped all of the weapons down into as many parts as possible before cleaning each component and fitting them back together.

Modern military weaponry had evolved so that the working parts of their weapons broke down into five parts, but any one of those malfunctioning through a lack of care or cleaning would render them inert. Special operations or not, no amount of fancy gear or cutting-edge tech made them impervious to a malfunction, so they were thorough.

Anders, a certified range instructor among his many talents, paid close attention to Edwards and offered suggestions on her stance and action to streamline her drills. He focused on the speed of her reload for the personal defense weapon the teams favored, making sure she could get a spent magazine out, slap in a new one, and start sending rounds downrange in about two seconds.

That PDW, the Mk30 Mod 1, was the way to tell one of the Odin operators when they were walking around not wearing rank badges on their cammies, or fatigues if they were army, like each branch still held onto their own language as if it defined them.

The weapon held a larger magazine and was often seen with a collapsible skeleton stock of thin neosteel rods, but most service personnel were able to recognize the aura that followed the operators around if they chose to pay close attention.

As similar as the two Mikes were, they carried themselves in very different ways. Mac had a presence much larger than he physically was when he chose to show it, and in contrast, Anders was the ultimate gray man. He blended into invisibility more easily than many people could, which was a skill that marked him as a good candidate even before he’d applied for selection. It came naturally to some people, but even if you had it, it was a perishable skill. Like pistol shooting, if you didn’t keep your eye in, it’ll go away.

Mac had it too, as did Mark, but it seemed that both men had to switch it on, whereas Anders seemed to walk in shadow wherever he went unless he chose to turn it off.

When they were satisfied that Edwards’ mandatory weapons certifications were legit, they upped the game and led her through the training scenario they liked to call “The Slaughterhouse.”

The training scenarios could be varied, and each one had a randomizing element built into the programming so you couldn’t just run the same scenario over and over until you knew where and when the targets would pop up.

They loaded the training munitions into their magazines—rounds that mimicked the same muzzle velocity of the tungsten rounds but lost almost all of their inertia after traveling ten feet from the end of the weapon—and ran a basic VIP foot-ambush drill with Edwards acting as the VIP and the three operators reacting to protect her.

For her part she had to wear a thin protective suit complete with face mask and helmet, because the targets fired a simulated round if they weren’t hit within a few seconds of popping up.

She wasn’t hit once, and when Mac fired a tight group of five shots on single fire from a kneeling position into a wall that just showed part of a target’s arm protruding around the side, the little yellow androgenous cutout fell down and the lights flashed green to signify the end of the exercise.

“How did you…?” Edwards asked, waving a gloved hand at the wall where five dirty smears showed up.

“The sim will recognize the difference between cover from view and cover from fire. Just because the enemy can’t see you, doesn’t mean they can’t hit you,” Mark explained. She nodded thoughtfully, filing that information away for later, and stripped off the suit to take her turn at protecting their principal.

She’d performed basic training in all aspects of what the teams did, but for a pilot like herself it was more for familiarity than any kind of mastery of the drills. Like a “monkey see, monkey do” approach, so if any of them ended up in a shit storm, they at least knew the theory behind what was going on.

They exhausted themselves in training, which seemed more of a fun boys’ afternoon out, like some corporate team building exercise rather than top-tier military operators running their drills to perfection.

That wasn’t true, though, Edwards knew. When they were working, either for real or training for it to be real, her team were fully dialed in. Only when the green lights started flashing did they pick apart their performance and show enjoyment for some of the things they’d done.

The Mikes hit the gym for a warm-down after that, and by a warm-down they meant lifting heavy weights until they were doubly exhausted, before hitting the showers.

Edwards, like she always did after a lot of exercise, gave in to her body’s excessive demands for carbohydrates and started cooking up a massive batch of pasta while she stirred a cheesy tomato soup over a low heat on another burner.

The team had their own galley in the private section of the Midway space station, stocked with freeze-dried goods and sealed plastifoil packets, but most times they just went up a level to the mess hall above. Not on the eve of deployment, however.

Usually, it was Mac who preferred to “be mom” as he called it, but Edwards started cooking the chow—what she called food even though she wasn’t a marine—because her body was yelling for it.

Mark had showered and walked in wearing shorts and a gray T-shirt with the lettering ARMY across the front, similar to the one she was wearing with CSAF, except that hers was much smaller and fitted to her body instead of pinching tightly around the shoulders and falling loosely at the waist like his did.

“You did good today,” he said after peering over the pan where the sauce simmered. He reached out with his right hand to lift the plastic spoon resting in the bubbling liquid, but she swatted his fingers away with a slap.

“It’s not ready, don’t touch,” she warned before adding, “I did? You look me in the eye and tell me I’m not a liability.”

Mark smiled, which annoyed her.

“What? Spit it out, Mark.”

“The three of us could do it, sure, but having you on the ground with us is a plus, not a negative. If it was, I’d hold you back and you know it.”

She nodded once to accept what he said and end the matter right there. She knew they were stretched thin, so thin that teams were being broken up to supplement others and special operations support group soldiers were seeing deployments outside of their normal skill sets. She was no stranger to finding herself in the shit. She’d pulled her trigger in anger a dozen times, most recently having her bird flattened by some precision shooting from the NRC followed by a running battle on the ground protecting two scientists, but this was different.

This time she was volunteering—something that never went unpunished in any branch of the military—and by doing that, she was claiming she was ready for it. The comforting factor was that she knew Mark would say if he didn’t think she was up to the mission, or if the kind of thing they anticipated encountering went beyond her skill set.

That gave her confidence, but she knew almost as well as they did that they really wouldn’t know just how deep the shit was until they held their noses and jumped in.

Her peaceful moment of private thought was shattered when Anders and Mac walked in, both in shorts, Anders in a vest and Mac shirtless.

“Put that away, old man. We’re supposed to be eating,” Edwards said, trying her best to sound disgusted.

“What? This doesn’t make you hungry?” Mac asked, bouncing his pecs in a move that had her questioning whether it was more childish than it was clichéd. While Edwards was giving him the unamused look, Anders performed a perfect encircling maneuver to lift the spoon and try to slurp the sauce off it.

She turned to swipe at him, making him drop the spoon and splash little blotches of orange on his vest that didn’t seem to bother him at all.

“It’s not ready, animals. I haven’t added the secret ingredient yet,” she yelled.

“Tabasco,” Mac said in a bored tone.

“Nah, probably oregano or paprika or something,” Anders countered as he poured glasses of water for the four of them.

“You’re both wrong,” Edwards said as she turned and shot them all a sickly look. “It’s love.”

“Fuck that, I’m out,” Mac exclaimed, throwing both hands up.

“The hell you been doing with that spoon, Edwards?” Anders asked, earning a laugh and a smack on the arm from Mark.

“That’s gross,” she answered, pouring powdered cheese into the mix and splashing in tabasco sauce from a little plastic bottle before pausing, thinking about it, and splashing in a whole lot more.

Anders offered to help but she waved him away and drained the pasta, dumping the whole lot into the sauce and mixing it up before slicing an entire dried sausage into it and swirling it around again.

They ate, two of them using forks like civilized adults and two of them hunkering over their bowls and using spoons like it was a timed event. There was enough for a second round, something she did intentionally because she knew these guys had to take in about four thousand calories a day to maintain their strength with all the exercise they did.

“Sleep in tomorrow,” Mark announced as he rose to wash the few dishes they’d used. Edwards sat, excused from the chore as the chef, and watched the three men work fast and efficiently to clear the four bowls and two pans along with the sundry items.

Anders dried the plastic spoon, regarding it thoughtfully before he offered it to her. Responding with her middle finger raised, they laughed again, she as much as the others, and turned in to do their own thing for the evening.

* * *

Edwards piloted their shuttle, designed to look civilian but armed and armored like no civilian ship that size had a right to be. It was one of two docked at Midway for their use, and mostly it served as their covert infiltration method when entering systems for shady work.

The deck chief of the CSS Intrepid gave them a subtle nod when they walked down the small ramp carrying only a pack each with sidearms strapped to their thighs. Calling over a junior rating, he instructed the man, the kid really, to lock the small shuttle bay down before handing him a small pad with their berth allocations on.

“Ride’ll take about a day and a half,” he told them, not sure which one to address, as none of them looked like a typical officer and none wore any rank badges. His experienced eye did note the subtle differences in their uniforms, clocking one army, one air force, and two marines, but that was as far as any kind of recognition went.

Anders thanked him, slapping the man on the arm as he passed, which made the man’s jaw tighten noticeably.

“Secret squirrel, snake-eating goat fuckers,” the deck chief grumbled to himself, realizing he wouldn’t be able to give a halfway accurate description of any of them apart from the petite blonde he tried not to stare at.

“What was that, Chief?” a petty officer third class asked, making the older man jump a little.

“Fuck it, Dobbs, I need to strap a damn bell around your neck or something. Fuck is wrong with you, creeping up on an armed sailor like that? Get the fuck outta here, dammit, on the double!”

The seaman leading Odin Nine-Five to their allocated berth practically skipped ahead of them and likely couldn’t have stopped talking if his life had depended on it. He referred to all of them as if they were officers, with no clue who or what any of them were.

“Yes sir, my brother, well my older brother. I got three brothers and only two of us enlisted. Well, he applied last year for SOG, only he didn’t hear anything back yet. You think he’s got a shot? Anyways, I been thinking about trying out myself, you know? Get out there and see some action.”

The way he said the word action—like getting shot at was the best thing that could happen to him personally—made all of them groan inwardly.

“Kid? What’s your name?” Anders asked in as patient a voice as he could manage.

“Oh, MacMillan. People call me Mac,” the kid said, turning awkwardly as he walked to offer a hand. Anders shook it.

“Uh-huh. You want my best advice?” the marine asked.

The kid looked like he was going to spunk his shorts, cry, and shit himself all at the same time, like some pearl of wisdom was about to drop on him from a military god. He nodded his head like he’d licked his finger and stuck it in a live outlet.

“Transfer to the marines,” Anders told him. The kid smiled wider, looking almost as if he was going to cry and submit his papers immediately on leaving them.

Stopping at a routine cabin with four bunks, the operators claimed their bunks with their packs. Mac turned to see the kid hanging out in the open door like he was waiting for a tip, and he smiled as he leaned past him and swung it closed, forcing him to move or get squashed.

“You got something you wanna admit, Mac?” Edwards asked.

“What?” Mac asked, almost groaning in anticipation of the shit sandwich he was about to be fed by them.

“Your son? Why the hell did you let him go navy?” she asked.

“Coming from the fuckin’ chair force zoomie?” he shot back, flipping up the mental cover on the safety switch controlling his arsenal of interbranch rivalry jokes.

“Hard to get a manicure stood up, jarhead,” she answered.

“Enough grab-ass,” Mark said as he settled onto his bunk and pulled up a book on his tablet to pass the time until their rendezvous with the flotilla that had been “thrown together” far away from the eyes and ears of the NRC and the British.

Chapter 8

Barton

Hades

I fucking loved the land nav phase of selection.

Fuck it. I tried to tell myself that each night when I got back to my rack and held my head in my hands at how close I’d come to washing out again, but it wasn’t sinking in.

I fucked something up every day, only managing to make it up to qualify with a margin about as wide as a stripper’s coochie cover. That usually meant me running flat out after eight or nine hours on my feet, with my ruck bouncing on my back and my weapon held out in front of me while I tried to force my lungs to suck in air whether they wanted to or not.

The weapon they had us carry on these phases was so old and heavy I hadn’t even qualified on it, not even in boot, and I wasn’t surprised the thing was replaced in deployment because the motherfucker weighed as much as a squad support gun. Tripod included.

This particular day was my worst so far, and with no idea when the phase would end, I became increasingly convinced I was going to be invited to go back to my unit to suffer the looks guys like me got.

I’d probably find a change of nickname too, something inventive like “washout” or “fuck up” because the guys and girls were great. Like, really supportive.

Anyway, today’s screw-up was completely my fucking fault and it had nothing to do with my apparent inability to navigate across terrain.

I’d actually set off well, heading in the right direction—I mention that specifically because it didn’t always happen that way for me—and I hit my first four checkpoints easy. That was the point when I should’ve taken a breath and asked myself, “Hey, this is going well, do you really want to get confident?” except I didn’t, and I got cocky.

I looked at the map and reckoned I’d built up enough lead time to take a risk. Again, big fucking red flag waving in the back of my mind with a tiny me holding it and yelling, “Mistaaaake!” which I obviously ignored.

I paid careful attention to the contour lines, reckoning the shorter route might be tougher but the straight line would save me time in the long run.

I stood up, looking at the winding path to my left which added maybe another two miles, or the path down to my right which was flat and looked like easy going but was five miles longer. Looking straight ahead at the slope leading to a rocky line running down from right to left I squared myself away and said out loud, “Hey diddle-diddle” before setting off straight up the middle.

After ten minutes, I considered veering off left and trying to find somewhere to drop down to the path.

After twenty minutes, at which point I was sliding down three meters for every four I climbed, I considered turning around and going back down to jog the easier path and remember not to be a smartass for the rest of my life.

I was stubborn, however, and reckoned that I’d already done the hardest part so I should just suck it the fuck up and get my ass over the ridgeline to the checkpoint.

Well, that little way to the top of the ridgeline took about as long as it would’ve taken me to run five miles over flat terrain with a full ruck and weapon. Score one for dumbass, because I still made it over and got to the checkpoint coordinates in a thick growth of thorny trees where I began searching for the automated check-in bot. I kept my weapon with me, in case the bot saw me and sent an image to the DIs of a candidate not in possession of his primary weapon. I’m not a complete idiot.

Because one, I was dog tired and two, I was a fucking idiot, I put my ruck down against a big tree—the biggest I could find so I could locate it easily after I’d located the check-in bot—and went searching. Finding the bot after maybe five or six minutes, I congratulated myself and retuned for my ruck.

You can guess the next part, right?

I wasted forty fucking minutes looking for the damn thing. I think I checked every tree in the entire forest twice, finding to my surprise that every one of them looked exactly like the motherfucker currently standing watch over my ruck.

I found it, eventually, but by that time I’d wasted all the hour I’d allocated to make it to my next checkpoint, and the lead I’d built up over the morning had been eaten up and shit out.

I opted for dumb and stubborn after that, sticking to the easier paths and just forcing my body to move fast in the desperate hope I could claw it back somehow. I was so confident that I’d fucked up, so certain I was heading for a meeting with the command sergeant major, that I stopped once and pulled the pendant out from around my neck and flipped up the cap with my thumb hovering over the button to quit.

Pressing that would send up a GPS distress flare that was to be used for medical emergencies and voluntary withdrawals. I must’ve stood there breathing out of my ass just staring at my thumb shaking over it for about a minute, but no matter what I thought, I just couldn’t bring myself to press it.

Fuck it, let them send me home. I wasn’t going to voluntarily withdraw because no fucker worth their salt volunteers for anything in the military.

I put it away, cursing myself for losing a minute when I needed every second if I was going to make it. I started moving again, going slow and building up momentum until I was at a steady jog that I knew I could maintain until I died of exposure.

Hades—the planet I was starting to think of as some kind of malevolent being, seemed to hear my plight, and as if recognizing the momentous occasion—decided to pop up and ask, “Hey, you sure, dickhead? Well okay then, suck on this,” and immediately the dark clouds overhead started to shit little pellets of ice on me and the wind blew hard directly into my face.

I think I actually said “fuck” every time my left boot hit the rocky dirt and “you” with my right out loud for about three miles. I even mixed it up and started to mock the DIs in boot giving it a “Fuuuck, fuuuck, fuuck you, fuuuck” until I started to laugh, which made me think I was losing my shit and stopped it.

By the time I approached the final checkpoint, the only person remaining outside the support truck was a DI and he was looking at his wrist pointedly. I actually managed a sprint finish, expecting at least some encouraging words to be muttered, or even an indication that I’d made it in time, but the guy just got behind the wheel and pulled out without even checking if I was onboard.

West was asleep on the deck and I woke her up by missing my footing and stepping on her thigh. That earned me a totally justified, “Watch it, fuckstick!” so I instantly apologized and fell into a seat. Looking around I saw, or more to the point I didn’t see Constantine, which made me sad. I liked the guy, and I’d put money on his janky-ass knee giving up long before he did.

Not for the first time I wondered if he’d be better off just having the joint replaced entirely with a prosthetic.

Back at base, I’d cleaned my equipment, dug about a cupful of grit out of my weapon and oiled the heavy pig by the time a drill instructor called my name out.

“SDI wants you in his office in five,” the guy said, and marched out of the barracks without giving me a clue what it was for. I was pretty sure, but a heads-up would’ve been nice.

I found Landry’s door and straightened myself out before I knocked, determined not to walk in there looking like a pug puppy who’d just shit on the new white rug.

“Come!” he barked from inside.

I entered, stood tall and waited for it.

“Take a seat, candidate,” he said, not looking at me or using my name. It was like he was already dehumanizing me so he could throw my ass out and not feel a damn thing over it.

“I have two reports here,” he said as he leaned back and put both hands flat on his desk, each one resting on a piece of paper. “Pick one.”

“Your left, Command Sergeant Major,” I said woodenly, making it clear I was still mentally there by selecting one so decisively. He turned it over and read out loud.

“Candidate Barton failed to complete the course, finishing forty-eight seconds after the allotted time for completion. What’s your excuse for that, candidate?”

“I was… I was about to VW, but I didn’t. If I’d kept going and not stopped to consider it, I’d have completed the exercise inside the allotted time,” I answered, leaving out the bigger delay of losing my damn ruck and hoping he didn’t know about it.

“And why, candidate, did you not withdraw?”

“Command Sergeant Major, I didn’t want to. I decided I could continue the exercise because I wanted to complete it.”

“Uh-huh. Care to know what the other report says?” I nodded, not trusting myself not to say something stupid, because I was so tired I was starting to lose my peripheral vision. Landry lifted the other sheet and read it out.

“Candidate Barton, on failing the exercise by a very small margin, returned to barracks and immediately tended to his weapon and his equipment before showering… Have you even eaten yet, marine?”

“No, Command Sergeant Major, I haven’t. It was next on my list.” Landry watched me for what felt like about fifteen minutes but was probably ten seconds. The man seemed to scrutinize me on a molecular level before he spoke again.

“Go get yourself some food, son.”

“And… and after that?”

“After that you get some damn sleep and wake up fresh for weapons and combat at zero-seven-hundred. Dismissed.”

I left his office, wanting to ask why the hell I was still there but not risking him changing his mind. I didn’t know if it was a margin for error thing or if my story about not quitting had won him over, but I didn’t want to rock the boat.

I ate a plate of eggs on thick toast. Then I ate another and drank about a pint of orange juice before my stomach started to protest. Just as I was getting up to hit the head and reenact the tungsten kinetic munitions part of my last mission on the unsuspecting bowl, West dropped onto the bench in front of me.

“Oh, hey, sorry about stepping on your leg earlier,” I said.

“Leg?” she said, eyes wide like I was an idiot. Then she stood up straight and unbuckled her cammies to show me the bruise in the shape of a boot print where I’d pinched her left ass cheek against the deck of the truck.

“I… um… sorry?” I said, not having the first fucking clue where to look or what to say.

“Forget about it,” she said, still standing there with her hip cocked and her pale, bruised ass cheek on display, ignoring the shocked looks and laughter.

Command Sergeant Major Landry chose that precise moment to walk in drinking from a tin mug full of joe, which he proceeded to spray in front of him like a coffee claymore before about turning and marching right back out the door.

“He’s gonna pay you back for making him break character, you know,” I said, unable to hold back the laughter any longer.

Everyone else was laughing then, and West looked around with an annoyed look on her face.

“It’s just an ass, kids. You’ve all got one.”

“That’s true, but mine’s not out in the fucking chow hall,” I blurted out. She put herself back together and sat down again.

“You hear about Constantine?” she asked, sucking all the humor out of the air like someone popped an airlock.

I shook my head and fidgeted in my seat to hold in a fart that promised to be as angry as a drunk marine on shore leave after deployment.

“Knee gave out. Got a HeliMed bird out and went straight to surgery.”

“Shit, that bad?” I asked, pain written all over my face.

“From what I heard, yeah. I heard a couple DIs talking. One of them reckons the joint’s completely screwed and might need replacing.”

“Shit, that could be him out of the corps,” I said, feeling for the guy. He was already one serious resource for the military and losing him to an injury had to have consequences. I hoped again he could just have the joint switched out for a mechanical one and stay on the front line.

“Yeah, could be. Anyway, I thought you were done when you got called up. What happened?”

“Honestly? I’m not sure. I fell outside the time by seconds and got told I was staying.”

“Lucky son of a bitch,” she said. I agreed, because I was. Luckier than Constantine anyway.

* * *

The weapons-and-combat phase was a fucking whirlwind. Now, I thought of myself as a competent marine. I was sure as shit confident running clearance drills drunk and half asleep, but this was intense.

Maybe intense wasn’t the right word. We’d already proved we were fit enough, smart enough, and resilient enough to be there, but those attributes alone weren’t going to cut it. The training was extreme. We ran everything at a thousand miles an hour, debriefed it, found out what we fucked up, and ran it again.

We finally ditched the old weapons they gave us for the initial phase, something I’d come to call my musket, because it was so old and so damn heavy I half expected to need to muzzle load the thing with black powder and tamp down a ball. We were introduced to the Mk6 Mod 0, which made me happy as I’d already deployed with one and used it in anger. The SEALs were already familiar with it, as were the MARSOC guys, but all the army and the two air force dudes left looked at it like they’d just ordered a taco and been given a bacon sandwich with that shit-awful brown sauce the Brits ate that tasted like tabasco fucked a bottle of ketchup and it was the bastard child offspring.

As much as I thought West was a hard ass when I first met her, and as abrasive as her fucking mouth could be, she took a few guys aside who were obviously looking at it funny to show them the little differences between the Mod 1 they were used to and the new rifle.

It was weird, like taking five and a half inches off the barrel of a gun they were familiar with was making them scratch their heads a little. But I remembered how weird it felt in my hands the first time I carried one, and cut them some slack in my mind.

We qualified on the range with the Mod 0 first, shooting at thirty yards and moving out to six hundred, before we got introduced to the PDW version of the Mk30 pistol we all knew and loved.

I was expecting some of the other candidates to struggle a little, especially the air force guys because, I mean, they were air force, but they clearly knew that weapon, which told me they weren’t rear echelon types.

The thing I found weird: what was effectively a machine pistol pretending to be a submachine gun was how freaking light the thing was. It weighed literally five and a half pounds loaded with a standard magazine which made the little bastard buck like you’d gotten the wrong hole every time you fired it.

When everyone qualified on the primary and secondary weapons, we hit the kill floor. I mean everyone, even though I’d thought one guy would bitch out because he couldn’t hit a thing at five hundred feet until one of the DIs took him to one side and laid down some wisdom.

The kill floor was actually pretty fun, right up until they upped the game and the targets started firing rubber pellets back at us hard enough to hurt.

“Candidates will remember at all times that these exercises are live fire. You will not, at any point, demonstrate poor weapon, muzzle, or trigger discipline. Failure to observe that will result in me inviting you to kindly get the fuck off my range via the medium of interpretive ass-kickin’,” the senior weapons instructor bawled like we were in boot.

“Infringement of range safety rules will result in this being the last day of your journey with the special operations group and we will gladly arrange for you to hitch a ride back to whatever shit pit you were enjoying before you came here. Carry on.”

I took that last part seriously. Blowing out your knee and needing a damn HeliMed was one thing, but getting my ass binned for having a booger-hook on a bang switch at the wrong time would be just plain embarrassing.

We ran room clearance drills for three, maybe four days. The range had every kind of environment you could imagine from ship interiors to an actual shopping mall mock-up.

After that came the principal protection training, VIP extraction, HVT identification, and seizure which they called H-V-TIZ.

Not sure why I mentioned that. I just thought it was cool.

After H-V-TIZ came all our active shooter drills, body-worn IED, dead man’s switch, snatch drills for a CNS—that’s central nervous system—kill with primary and secondary weapons.

That one was tough. Basically, they wanted you to approach this target and talk to it like you were there to help, but all the while you were just moving to get into the sweet spot where you could put a bullet in the mouth to blow out the brainstem and stop any little terrorist thumbs from hitting switches.

Sometimes the range instructor would yell at you and take the role of the Tango, telling you to put your gun down so you had to let your primary weapon hang on the swing and make a snatch draw with the PDW and take the shot before the detonation was activated.

This went on for three weeks, maybe four if I’m honest, because I kinda lived every day as it came and just gave it everything I had.

We went back to the outdoor ranges and found ourselves introduced to the Mk26, which was about my height and looked like someone had the idea of putting an artillery piece and a rifle in an enclosure just to see if they’d fuck.

The result was an AMR, anti-material rifle, that looked like it could send a projectile to orbit, and that was before they told us the thing could fire a twenty-five-millimeter kinetic tungsten sabot slug the size of a dick—an average-sized dick I mean, don’t get excited—as well as having the option of incendiary or high-ex.

What’s a sabot round? Look it up, but safe to say the thing brought a whole world of whoop-ass down on the target.

If a sidearm was fuck you, and a rifle was fuck you and the wall you’re hiding behind, and a heavy was fuck you and the building you’re using as cover, then the Mk26 said fuck you, fuck your entire platoon, and fuck the dropship you’re hiding behind. Oh, and while I’m at it, fuck the curvature of the planet. Get some.

Not gonna lie, I had an unhealthy sexual attraction to this piece. She seemed to like me back because I was hitting targets at a klick away eight out of ten.

“Well, go on then, candidate, send a high-ex downrange,” the senior range instructor said after he’d taken a personal interest in how much fun I was having—I mean how consistent my effect on target was—and handed me a black tipped round. I pulled back the bolt and dropped out the magazine while fighting the urge to kiss it for luck before I slid it home and pushed the bolt forward to load it.

“Firing HE!” I called out, just like I was supposed to, only none of the others were sixteen hundred meters away where the boom would be. Effectively, everyone stopped to watch while I blew out, welded my cheek to the stock so I didn’t lose teeth, and squeezed the trigger.

The flash came a second before the boom, and honestly it looked more like a nuke had gone off on the horizon with the fireball that burped upward. I even thought I might’ve felt a tiny wave of warm air kiss my face a few seconds after, like the shockwave was just reaching out to me to brush my cheek and say thank you.

“Clear weapon and step back,” the DI behind me said. I did, pulling back the bolt for it to lock open and show an empty chamber large enough to be classed as storage, and stood.

I turned to see the senior range instructor with a long rifle set up on a bench and beckoning me forward.

“This here is the Mk20 LRSS, or Long-Range Sniper System. Some of the boys and girls call him Lars. Fires a one-hundred-gram tungsten slug at five thousand feet per second and will absolutely render your enemy inactive at a distance up to and including one-point-two klicks, if you can hit the son of a bitch.”

I smiled, watched the safety demonstration, and took Lars back to the firing line to get acquainted.

Chapter 9

CSS Intrepid

Mark came back from the CIC to their cabin in time to tell them to grab their gear and head back to the docking bay where their shuttle sat.

“Any news?” Anders asked, always interested in the wider conflict to satisfy his odd ability to mentally map out the galaxy. Mac didn’t even try, given how space was three dimensional and didn’t conform to the four compass points he was comfortable with.

“NRC have moved in on two critical jump lanes. Commander of this ship wants to move up the departure time but it’s up to the admiral on the carrier,” Mark said as they walked.

“Shit, that ain’t good. I didn’t think they’d make a direct move like that in this sector,” Mac said.

“Any word on our VIP?” Edwards asked, already packed up and waiting in the doorway to their cabin.

“She’s onboard the Silence already,” Mark answered.

“Shit, is that thing still in service? I think my old man saw it once when it hit lunar for a refit,” Anders said worryingly.

“She’s still running. And she may be old, but she still knows her way around a dick,” Mark said, not doing what most men would do and apologizing to the only female present for his use of crude language.

“Ha! Like a twice-divorced milf,” Edwards added, just to be certain they weren’t pulling their verbal punches on account of her.

“Keep your virgins,” Mac said as he heaved his pack onto one shoulder and did the cursory check of the cabin as the last one out. “Give me a woman who knows what she wants.”

“Well, this one wants to slip in the middle of a flotilla and come out the other end in one piece,” Mark said, leading the way toward their shuttle, where Edwards ran up the ramp first to start her pre-flight checks.

Stowing their gear, the two Mikes strapped in loosely while Mark took the co-pilot’s chair for a better view of the flotilla, and to watch their pilot because the skill had always interested him.

“Intrepid CIC, Super Seven-Five, requesting permission to disembark, over,” she said into the comm with that dull, melodic efficiency that all pilots seemed to learn when they were taught to fly.

“Super Seven-Five, Intrepid CIC. You are cleared to launch, proceed to safe distance and squawk destination. Safe travels. Out.”

Edwards acknowledged the transmission with a curt nod to herself as she started tapping on the touchscreen displays and flipping switches. Outside the thick viewports of the cockpit, Mark saw the rotating red lights begin to spin and bathe the shuttle bay in roving light—a warning to anyone still inside to hit one of the emergency override switches before the bay depressurized and let the void in.

A thrumming sensation vibrated the shuttle as the pumps sucked the atmosphere into tanks and left the bay devoid of air, ready for the outer doors to slide open and reveal the unfathomable expanse of nothing beyond.

Edwards flipped more switches to open the doors and used a live feed on the display ahead of her for reference as she slid the shuttle out sideways. She worked the twin joysticks attached to her flight seat to push the little bird away and accelerate at a speed just below the point where the occupants needed to be wearing specialist suits so they didn’t die of thrombosis or detach their livers.

“Whoa, easy there, sugar,” Mac groaned over the open channel with the rear section.

“Call me sugar again, sweetheart, and I’ll put this bitch into a four-way spin all the way home,” she answered sweetly.

“Yut,” Mac answered, almost in a burp as he fought to keep his breakfast down.

It took them fourteen minutes traveling on the bearing Mark provided her, and the only thing visible in that direction for most of their journey was the carrier at the center of the flotilla, which was spready out over fifty thousand klicks in all directions so they didn’t represent an easy target for any stealth boats hunting in those waters.

“Switching to encrypted channel now,” Mark said, tapping in the digits from his closed briefing before their departure.

“Silence, this is Super Seven-Five. We are on approach and requesting coordinates and permission to dock, over,” he said, trying his hardest to adopt the same lazy, rolling tone of a pilot.

“Super Seven-Five, confirm security clearance, over,” a blunt female voice answered.

Mark checked the piece of paper in his hand and hit the keypad another six times.

“Wait one,” came the response after a few seconds. “Super Seven-Five, you are cleared for docking.”

The operator on the other end of the channel, likely crammed into a tiny compartment in low light surrounded by far too much seriousness, gave a bearing and distance for them to proceed and cut the transmission after Edwards acknowledged the directions.

Another four minutes saw them slowing as a small section of the black void ahead of them and below the carrier, another twenty klicks ahead, opened up to show four unnatural lines of light. That light was all the guidance Edwards would receive to dock, and instead of her usual “slow down at the last minute” approach, Mark noted she played it crisp and professional.

Slowing and turning the rear right side of their shuttle outward like it wanted to show off its right ass cheek, Edwards fired the maneuvering thrustors to slow their now sideways approach until she glided the tiny transport into the small bay effortlessly and linked to their systems with some rapid hits of the touchscreen nearest her left hand.

The bay doors started to slide closed the second their port engine cleared the inside, and she settled their bird on the deck by activating the magnetic docking clamps and slamming them down the few remaining inches.

“And we’re back in bubblehead territory,” Anders grumbled as the engines powered down, the sound returning as the doors closed and the atmosphere pumped back into the bay.

The ramp lowered and they filed down it to meet the reception committee waiting in the open double doors leading to a dark internal corridor.

“Major Harlan, I’m Lieutenant Commander Jenner, XO,” a man said as he offered a hand to shake. The problem was that he offered the hand to Anders, who did the first thing that came to mind.

“Good to meet you, Commander. Got a place my team can wash up before we talk turkey?” he said in a poor impression of Mark while pumping the man’s hand like he was trying to inflate him.

“Yes sir, Lieutenant Gilroy here’ll see to that. Just need to secure your firearms first,” Jenner said, wiping his hand on his thigh after finally getting it back. The way he spoke didn’t make it a question, and it didn’t come out like a negotiable suggestion. It was his damn boat, and if he said their weapons were secured, then their weapons were secured.

“Better if we just secure them onboard,” Mark interrupted, pointing a questioning glance at Anders, who took the hint.

“You heard the man, clear your weapons and secure them onboard. Captain Edwards, will you see to that?” Anders said, turning to face their pilot and fighting to keep his face straight as he did, his eyes pleading with her to keep the joke running.

“Sure,” she said, not wanting to get too involved in the snafu and get him court-martialed for impersonating an officer.

They detached the leg holsters for their sidearms and handed them over to Edwards, who walked back up the ramp and dropped the pile of guns on the co-pilot’s seat before walking back and retrieving her pack at the top of the ramp.

They followed Gilroy and the tight, red curls of hair trying their hardest to escape from under the headgear she wore. She was young, only a junior grade lieutenant in fact, but she walked and spoke confidently, albeit in a low voice like all of their breed did, as if they were still underwater and remaining silent so they didn’t catch a depth charge.

The accommodation was close to the shuttle bay, which pleased Mark, but when he asked where the principal was, his face screwed up at the answer.

“A little hard to protect a principal who’s three decks up and two aft,” he commented, earning a smile and a small shrug from the lieutenant as if such things were beyond her power.

“The accommodation wasn’t up to the emissary’s standards,” she said, her face twisting a little when she spoke the title.

“Oh, great, prima fuckin’ donna,” Mac growled, but Gilroy called him out on it right away.

“Actually no, marine. It’s the only place her team could be accommodated in the same place as her, and it’s worse up there than it is where you’re resting your head, trust me.”

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Mac said, sounding anything but sorry. It was more like the tone an unruly kid gave a teacher when they were forced to apologize to someone for pulling a prank that they still thought was legendary.

Gilroy eyed him for just a second longer before turning back to Anders. “Briefing in five. Captain wants us underway ASAP as per the admiral’s orders,” she said as she stepped toward the door. Mark held out a hand to stop her, which earned a sharp look.

“You guys stay here, I’ll go to the briefing,” he said, passing on the sharp look to Anders, who tried not to smile. Gilroy looked between them twice before it dawned on her and she let out a laugh that didn’t sound at all amused.

“The XO is not going to like that,” she said, demonstrating that she’d understood precisely what had happened.

“In my defense, I never said—”

“You never said otherwise,” she said to cut him off before walking out. Mark lingered long enough to give Anders his best disapproving look, which was ruined by the smirk creeping up one corner of his mouth.

“Tell me about the ambassador,” Mark said to Gilroy as she fast walked through the narrow gangways of the stealth boat.

“Emissary. She prefers to be called an emissary. Got some great speech about the origin of the word you’ll no doubt hear soon enough.”

“Okay, what’s your take on her?” he tried.

“Not my place to say, sir. My place is to get her and her people—including you and yours—where y’all need to be in good order. Anything above and beyond that ain’t my dance.”

“Fair enough,” Mark answered, abandoning any further attempt to gain a little background intel. He’d have preferred to meet the emissary before deploying to iron out some rules of engagement and lay down the law, but she had come straight from Earth on the carrier that was having its refit double-timed to get out to the fight. Stopping off at Midway meant exposing the carrier’s presence to any watching eyes, so it went straight to the rendezvous instead.

He’d done his fair share of close protection work but had never specialized in it. He knew guys who did that kind of gig full time and only rotated off for mandatory training and skills upgrades, but he didn’t love it like they did.

Most of the time the principal either treated them like everyday bodyguards or just ignored them as the kind of “furniture” people that surrounded the powerful and influential. He just hoped Aubrey Sharpe wasn’t like that.

Entering the officer’s ready room behind Gilroy, he clocked four people there and focused on the boat’s captain immediately. He was taller than most of the typical sailors who staffed the stealth boats, meaning he’d be spending much of his life looking down at the toes of his boots so he didn’t catch a concussion. He looked up and past Gilroy to Mark, who was ducking under the door to give himself the inch less height he needed to be safe onboard.

“Major Harlan, Captain Stahl,” Gilroy said curtly.

Mark offered a hand to the man, probably ten years his senior and near enough to retirement age, if the white tips of close-cut hair under his cover were any indication.

“Captain,” Mark said, trying to ignore the furious look he was getting from the boat’s XO. The hand was taken briefly, with a squeeze that threatened to be a crunch if it had been any tighter, before the man turned back to the display they were crowded around.

“Last intel reports NRC ships have moved in on these two areas where the jump lanes converge,” Stahl said, waving a hand over two major convergence points.

“No attacks on any ships passing through yet, but they’re making no secret at all about being there, which leaves our next best option… here,” Jenner said as he manipulated the display to show another jump lane convergence point that offered a projected eighteen hours of flight time to reach the cut-off system where New Liberty Terminal sat.

“Only problem with that… Major, care to offer us any insight?” Stahl asked, inviting Mark to take the floor. He moved the projected map with gestures of both hands for a few seconds to see the potential battlefield as a whole.

“Does the intel suggest the presence of any stealth boats in either AO?” he asked.

“Detail sensor sweeps suggest not,” Jenner answered, still with an edge of challenge in his voice.

“Well, I’m no expert in space combat by any means, but applying the concepts I do know about, all this intelligence leads me suspect that the NRC know we’ll try to break through and that by leaving open this third option, they intend us to take it,” Mark said.

“So it’s a trap?” Stahl asked, earning a thoughtful nod from Mark.

“My guess is that it is, and I’d put money on there being a whole pack of British or Russian stealth boats just hanging out near that open convergence junction just waiting for any CS fleet ships to try and sneak through,” he said. Hearing a noise verging on disappointment come from Stahl, he looked up to see the older man speak.

“I’m inclined to agree. The total number of ships at either of the blockades implies they have the ability to divide those forces and shut off all three access points to the system.” He looked Mark directly in the eye and spoke again, as if laying down a challenge.

“Our last intel report came from a trader who was permitted to pass through the primary blockade unmolested.”

Mark understood then, and he guessed the captain had a plan he needed the SOG team to get onboard with.

“Lay out the options for me, sir,” he said.

“Option one, we pick an emergence point and the flotilla blasts its way through the blockade while we slip through. Option two, we pick the supposedly unguarded emergence point and find ourselves swimming in enemy munitions, then we slip through and leave the flotilla to fight. Option three, we drop out further away and risk being too late to stop anything going down. Option four… the flotilla picks a fight at either the unguarded or the further emergence point while you and your team enjoy safe passage on a trade ship.”

“I see. And does the... is the emissary aware of these options?” Mark asked. Stahl nodded, only his lips tightened into what Mac would call a cat’s asshole, which told Mark everything he needed to know about the relationship between politician and captain.

“And what does she suggest?”

Stahl sucked in a breath with the air of a man who was trying his hardest not to invoke a deity and curse like the sailor he was.

“Sharpe wants to keep the flotilla safe, asking instead for a civilian shuttle and a volunteer pilot to take her and her people to the colony. She… she’s under the impression that declaring herself not to be a military asset means she’ll be safe.”

Both the look on his face and the suggestion she’d made told Mark their principal was a risk-taker in the worst possible sense, in that she blindly believed that right and wrong made a damn bit of difference and would keep her safe.

“Combine options four and three,” Mark said flatly.

“And your reasoning behind that, Major?” the XO asked.

“The flotilla gets into a fight, and if it doesn't look like it’s going your way fast you withdraw, take the longer route, by which time we’ve already gotten through with the trade ship. You’ll arrive late to the party but you’ll have the flotilla largely intact and will effectively be between the NRC battle groups and the planet.”

“Except there’s already an NRC contingent at the planet,” Stahl said. He saw the slight raise of Mark’s eyebrows which led him to explain.

“That intel about the trader included a report that a civilian vessel arrived at the colony just ahead of them. That vessel was carrying a mercenary team comprised primarily of former soldiers from China and surrounding countries, although there is word of a few Americans on that team along with…” He lifted the tone at the end as if inviting Mark to guess.

“Along with some hard-hitting, thousand-yard-staring Russians,” he answered.

Stahl snapped his fingers and left the index of his right hand pointing at Mark. “Bingo.”

Chapter 10

New Liberty Terminal

The heavy transport thumped to the blacktop at the main planetary settlement of New Liberty. The city was named as the capital for the entire region and the old nods to distant government had been torn down to be replaced by a newly formed senate that ruled the mining and trading colonies as a collective.

To the hulking, bearded man who towered over the other mercenaries as they shuffled toward the exit ramp, pushing them all aside with a meaty paw the size of their heads, the place was a joke.

“Tell me, Daniil,” Victor Komarov asked in their native Russian, “what do you see here?”

Daniil Federova, a senior sergeant in the glorious army of the New Russian Confederacy and member of Alpha Group, grunted his derision and spat into the dirt.

At least he intended to, but the small boot of a Chinese mercenary stepped in the way. The man stopped, looked down at the frothy glob on his shiny boots with his pants tucked in the top of them, and glared up at the Russian.

His head kept moving up until he was craning his neck at an uncomfortable angle to be able to see the bloodshot whites of Federova’s eyes boring back down at him; he rolled his shoulders and walked away without another word.

“I see a bunch of damn hippies hugging their trees and believing they are safe,” he drawled in the same language. “And I see many half-men too little to carry rifles,” he added with another scornful look at the nearest mercenary, who was head and shoulders shorter than he was, even though he stood four inches shy of Komarov’s beast-like stature.

“What’s the matter, Ivan? Scared of the little guys?”

Both Russians turned in near synchronicity to face one of the three Americans forming part of the private military outfit. Looking at the man, Federova’s distaste fought for space in his expression as it combated the confusion he felt.

He was tall and broad, sporting a long beard and dark, wrap-around safety glasses under a shaved head. He carried a rifle with every available spot on the barrel’s rail adorned with various attachments ranging from a flashlight to an orbital laser designator beam.

As if the rifle wasn’t enough, he carried a tactical shotgun over one shoulder, a sidearm on his chest, and another dropped low on his right thigh.

To complete the look, he carried three plasma blades and had his sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms to reveal the bottom edge of a Navy SEAL tattoo inside his left forearm, with his plain, bearded Viking axe hanging from his left hip.

“Why does this little girl speak to me?” Federova asked Komarov in English for the benefit of the man he was openly insulting.

“I don’t know, Daniil. Ignore her and perhaps she will leave,” Komarov answered in a bored, distracted tone as he scanned the lines of thirty mercenaries filing toward the building ahead of them.

“Aw, don’t be like that, Ivan,” Mister Gadget said with a harsh edge to his voice. “If you make it in this outfit, I might even let you in on a few secrets.” His tone earned the attention of Komarov, who turned his head to look at the man. Seeing where his confidence had come from, he ran his eyes up and down the two other Americans who had arrived to flank the man and did their best to look.

“Your name is Morris, yes?” Komarov asked politely, having heard the loud man and his loud friends bully the rest of the mercenary unit during the flight down to the surface.

“That’s right, Ivan,” Morris said in a low voice as he took another step forward.

“I am confused,” Komarov said equably, still in English for Morris’ benefit. “Do you think we are both named Ivan or is this something funny to you?”

Morris huffed a fake laugh and turned back to look at his buddies. On seeing his expression, they broke out into equally fake but loyal laughter.

“You’re Ivans, they’re all Wangs,” Morris said, jabbing a finger at the big Russian before waving a hand over the other hired soldiers forming the majority of the Chinese mercenary unit.

“Which makes you a man who has sex with his sister to make his dog jealous,” Federova snarled. Both men faced off and framed themselves up ready for a confrontation, as Morris put his hand very deliberately on the hilt of a plasma knife and Federova reached back over his right shoulder to grasp… nothing.

Neither man carried their signature shovels in an attempt to blend in with the hired unit, opting to hide them deep inside their packs to avoid attention. That turned out to be a pointless exercise as their height and size alone made them stick out. The same logic that saw only the two of them on the planet and not a team of four also seemed flawed now that they were there and nobody seemed to care how conspicuous they were.

“You wanna dance, little Ivan? I’ll dance all over you. You wanna screw with me? I was in SOG, man,” Morris snarled as he dropped down into a fighter’s pose. In contrast, Federova stood passively and just looked confused at the man’s actions, like a puppy was tossing its head and yapping at him as threateningly as it could.

“If this man was of their special operations,” Komarov muttered in Russian, “then we should not fear them at all.”

“I do not think that he was,” Federova answered, still watching Morris like a street performer who was about to do something entertainingly stupid and dangerous.

“As do I, but now is not the time. You can kill him later,” Komarov said and turned his back on the posturing American.

“Yeah, that’s right, you go on now,” Morris crowed from behind them as they walked away. Both Russians felt dirtied by the mere presence of men like that. Fighting for the honor and glory of your home, for your people, that rendered the sacrifices made by soldiers and sailors worthwhile. Fighting for money attracted only the desperate, the criminal, or the insane.

Komarov suspected that Morris was the latter, having met special operators from all over the galaxy and found that none of them, not a single one, used their position as a means to intimidate others.

He was a major in the NRC’s Spetsial Operatsii and never once had to mention that fact to anyone, which made Morris’ claims—both verbal and in the clues he wore all over his body—all the more suspect.

He marked it as a temporary irrelevance, but he had meant his words to Federova. He’d let him kill the man before their mission was over if the chance arose, unless he was presented with the opportunity to do it himself.

“You two in there makes fourteen,” the young Chinese man said. He was wearing an approximation of a mercenary rank badge on his black uniform to indicate he was equivalent to a lieutenant. The man scurried past them to address the others waiting.

“You three there makes ten in that room,” he said before moving on again.

“Looks like we ain’t bunking together, Ivan,” Morris called out, laughing when he was summarily ignored.

Komarov put his overburdened pack on a bed and glowered at the man who had already claimed it until he snatched up his belongings and practically ran away. Federova claimed the bed beside his in similar fashion and the two men sat opposite one another to speak quietly in their home tongue.

“Our intelligence says the Americans should be sending their people here in the next two days. If they are destroyed by the blockades, we will stay for two days more to be certain,” Komarov said.

“And if they arrive here?”

“Then we do what my brother could not and kill all of them,” Komarov said as if such a thing were simple.

* * *

Viktor Komarov had always been abnormally large for his age. Not like Morris, though, who was just slightly taller and thicker than most average men, but in a way that seemed almost unnatural. Rumors of the government testing growth hormones on rural towns had done the rounds for years, but when his younger brother came screaming into the world already the size of a year-old baby, those rumors didn’t seem so far-fetched.

That size discrepancy had lessened over the years, so by the time he was a grown man, he was just larger than those surrounding him. But when he had been growing up it had appeared that he was an adult among a sea of small children. Had it not been for him, his younger brother born four years, four months, and four days later would have seemed like a giant instead of just being big.

All their childhood they heard comments about Aleksander being big, but not as big as Viktor.

His mandatory education was stopped at fifteen when the armed forces of the newly formed New Russian Confederacy came calling for him. He cried then, being removed from his family and separated from his younger brother, but that was the last time in his life he had shed a tear.

Taken away and trained to be a killer, he was fully aware of his indoctrination, but it afforded him the chance to do the things that fed his violent urges. Gone were the lessons in math and history, in sports with limiting rules, and the early morning boredom of singing in the school hall. In their place came a physical regime that proved too brutal for some boys, who were then shipped out to lesser programs. In their place came the true lessons of history, and he studied the greatest battles in human history, first learning and understanding the technological limitations of that time before learning of Marathon, of Carthage, Waterloo, Hastings, the allied landings at Normandy, the brutal fighting over islands in the Pacific Ocean and the siege of Stalingrad… Reading about those times in history, the young Viktor Komarov felt frustrated as he became so engrossed in one side or the other, even knowing the outcome decided hundreds or thousands of years before.

Viktor dreamed of taking modern weaponry back to any of those battles. Leading a single team equipped with modern rifles, he could have personally turned the tide of any one of them.

Alone, using the technology that permitted him to insert from orbit and land at a target sight in silence, in the dead of night, he could’ve turned the tides of entire wars that consumed whole continents for decades.

Those daydreams were his only vice, and by the time Viktor had completed the first two years of training, he was permitted to travel home and see his family.

He found his hometown to be small and sad. He’d seen the world, had leapt from transports to see the world as the birds did, and that pathetic collection of gray concrete towers held nothing for him, he knew. When the time came to leave, his younger brother begged to come with him, pleaded with him not to leave him behind, and Viktor’s only advice was to grip him firmly by both shoulders and tell him the truth.

“When the army comes for you, and they will, little brother, be ruthless.”

Aleksander cuffed a tear of frustration away from his cheek, angry that it had escaped without permission, but his brother shook him hard and growled past the beard that was already beginning to thicken, despite his young age.

“I mean it, Aleksander. The other boys will not be your friends. They are not as good as you are, so you make sure they know it. You are a Komarov, and we do not lose, do you understand me?”

Aleksander understood, and Viktor released him. He wasn’t to know that his brother would soon be called upon to attend the same training that he had just graduated from, the proud red stripe around his left arm as proof of survival. But even if he had known, he wouldn’t have feared for him. His younger brother was every bit as strong and capable of violence as he was, but he also knew they both possessed the same streak of cruel intelligence and that, he now understood, was every bit as important as his strength.

He returned for the next phase of his training, one which the men and women who wore the red armor with the spread black wings emblazoned across the chest never spoke of, even to one another. There he did all the barbaric things that rumor suggested and more. He executed an enemy of the state with his bare hands while his instructors watched. He fought animals in a pit with no way out unless he won. He had been left in the frozen wilderness without clothing or equipment as a final pass-or-fail test of his survival skills, and when the transport returned to collect him, he casually strolled from the trees he’d made his camp in and deposited the head of a large, gray wolf in the hands of the transport crew chief.

Viktor never returned home again, opting to live wherever he was posted for a long career that saw him reach the high rank of praporshik, what other nations called a warrant officer, before he was summoned and informed that he had been selected to become an officer in the army. He accepted that posting, because he was clear it wasn’t an offer he was permitted to refuse, and rose to become one of the most senior and most decorated officers of the spetsial operatsii.

That didn’t fill him with pride, however. He was satisfied with his achievements, certainly, but as he started to look forward to the point where the army would force him to retire from the front lines—because the very thought that he could be killed was ridiculous to him—he knew that his proudest moment was seeing his younger brother follow in his footsteps, until the very mention of the name Komarov struck fear into the hearts of their own soldiers.

If their own men were terrified of them, he said, imagine what fear the enemy would experience?

Only that had all been taken away. Aleksander was dead, murdered with his own weapon. Viktor had placed that weapon in his brother’s hands personally after they swapped their issued shovels with one another.

“Carry this and I am always with you, mladshiy brat,” he said. Aleksander had smiled at being called little brother then, because both were huge young men in their own right, but he dutifully handed his own weapon to Viktor and the two brothers bent their foreheads together.

That weapon was gone now. Lost to the greedy hands of Americans who had somehow managed to rob Aleksander of his proud life, to rob Viktor of the other part of himself.

Now, sitting on a cheap bunk and pretending to be a part of a mercenary outfit not fit to clean the shit from their NRC boots, Viktor Komarov blocked out the sounds of fake soldiers chattering about their imaginary achievements and bided his time, because the team who had killed his brother was supposed to be coming right to him.

Chapter 11

CSS Silence

“Ma’am, I’m sorry but that doesn’t… that’s not how it works,” Mark said, trying his hardest not to slump in his chair and roll his eyes while making the accompanying noise. Arguing with Aubrey Sharpe was like arguing with a serene toddler who kept repeating the question, “Why?” and didn’t actually pay attention to the answer.

“And I’m sorry, Major, that I’m not making myself clear. The admiral of this flotilla and the captain of this ship have already explained to me the very same thing, but the fact remains that I will not allow the brave men and women of the Combined States Armed Forces to be placed in harm’s way on my account. As I’ve already explained, I will go alone if I have to. The New Russian Confederacy has no quarrel with me, as I am a civilian and not a soldier.”

Mark stared at the tall, thin woman and forced his face to remain neutral. He wanted to slap the perfect skin off her face to see if that would knock some sense into her, but he knew he’d never do anything like that. Her soft, brown cheeks had a look of velvet to them with a sheen that made him think of some precious metal.

She was younger than he’d expected, younger than he was at least, but she had an air about her that made him question the possibility of reincarnation.

If such a thing did truly exist, then she must possess the soul of a wise old man, one who was looking at him with something resembling both pity and disappointment, as if he was a hammer, so to him everything he saw was a nail.

“Ms. Sharpe, please—”

“Aubrey, Major, no need to stand on ceremony.”

“Ms. Sharpe, I have to remind you that this is a military operation and, as such, you have no authority to dictate strategy.” He spoke with a firm finality that seemed to disappoint her even more, prompting him to deflate a little and soften his explanation.

“I know, believe me I know, but you can’t keep everyone safe and nor would they want you to.” She perked up at his words and regarded him quizzically.

“We’ve got hundreds of thousands of sailors, soldiers, marines, airmen and -women, all of them trained to do a job in preparation for war, spread across the galaxy right now. If a peace was negotiated right now, there would still be bloodshed.”

“Are you referring to the inevitability of human nature to want to destroy one another just as our animalistic, tribal ancestry tells us we should? As if the very fact we still have that DNA excuses acts of violence?”

“What? No! I mean that word wouldn’t spread through all the comm relays to every person on both sides of the wire in time. The longer it all goes on, the more people will die, the more families will be uprooted from their homes because the territory lines shift constantly.”

“So we should rip off the band-aid and just get it over with? Throw people needlessly into battle?” she asked, looking to turn the object of their discussion back around to support her point like the politician she was.

“However you want to look at it, I’m sorry to say there are other perspectives. The fact remains that the plan we’ve decided on places the mission success over the lives of the flotilla. Securing New Liberty saves more lives even if we lose every ship. You see that, right?”

“I understand that theory, Major, but you say it that way to absolve yourselves of any responsibility to find a way where no lives are risked,” she answered, infuriating Mark again. He stood and smoothed down his pants as if brushing the conversation from him.

“We leave in twenty minutes, Ms. Sharpe. I’d appreciate you and your people packing light.” With that, he left the cabin and filed awkwardly past the three aides crowding the cramped gangway outside, forcing them to clutch their array of tablets and comm devices to their chests to let the scary soldier walk by.

Mark hid the sneer that threatened to break out and went to fetch his own people who could understand the way things were, how they had to be, and not try to bend his mind to the foolish thought that war could be averted by a positive mindset and an openness to change.

“How’d it go?” Edwards asked when he walked into their cabin and snatched up his pack to start stuffing the few items he’d taken out into the top of it.

“That good, huh?” Mac asked.

“Updated mission brief: keep the VIP safe because she thinks the universe will look after her or some shit,” he said acidly.

“Great,” Anders said, not specifying what he was sarcastically pleased about.

They moved to their shuttle without the need for an escort, Edwards remotely unlocking the coded blackout on the little ship’s systems to lower the ramp for them before slipping into the pilot’s chair and flipping switches to commence the start-up and preflight sequences. While she worked, she checked the pile of weapons on the seat beside her and strapped her own back on while giving the others to Mac to hand out.

“Want us in armor?” he asked Mark when he passed the man his sidearm.

“Negative, put rigs on though, and you two arm up with your Mod 0s,” Mark answered. Mac nodded and grabbed up two smaller rucks, knowing precisely where they were stowed, to toss one to Anders. The two marines broke out chest rigs that protected their vital organs and had flaps that dropped down to protect their groins from anything but a heavy projectile.

Neither men dropped the groin flaps, not usually necessary unless they started coming under fire and needed them, and both knew that their overt arming up was a signal to the emissary and her people that they were in charge and that they were going out into dangerous waters where they relied on the team for their protection.

It was as much psychological as it was precautionary, and the effect was obvious when Sharpe walked in ahead of four of her entourage and all of them blanched at the sight of a man dressed for war pulling on a ballistic neosteel helmet with ablative render coating it.

Mac smiled, thinking that if they found him intimidating now, then just wait for them to see the entire team in full battle-rattle.

“Ladies and gentlemen, make sure your gear is stowed, grab yourselves a seat, and strap in,” Anders said gruffly.

Edwards’ voice came over the speakers as they climbed aboard, adding to their visible confusion as if they were illegally crossing a border and fearful of the illicit characters facilitating the move.

“We’ll be moving fast to minimize exposure. Hold tight and just know it’ll be over fast,” she warned.

“Ramp up!” Mark yelled, louder than was necessary but it served to solidify the fact that they were in control of the situation and to make the civilians internalize the reality that they were strangers to this facet of life.

“Ramp up!” Mac and Anders chorused back as the three team men went to check restraint harnesses and tug them firmly before strapping themselves in.

Had their routine not been rehearsed and orchestrated, it would seem terrifying to anyone not accustomed to a shuttle ride between two ships in deep space, but the truth was that Mark had drilled the others to perform the routine. When Edwards confirmed the shuttle was sealed, she quickly decompressed the bay and surged them sideways out into space where she immediately jacked up the power to their engines to launch them forward, and slam the occupants back into their seats.

She chattered on the radio, confirming their identity and approach vector to dock with the friendly trade ship that Mark guessed, given his personal experience in that arena, was in the employ of the intelligence operations activity.

The journey was short and violent, with Edwards not letting up on the Gs. She gave a series of short blasts of the engines to arrest their now backward momentum hard enough to force a yelp of shock and pain from one of the civilians. Cutting thrust and spinning the ship around to dock ass-first, Edwards performed a tactical landing and thumped them into the deck by activating the magnetic clamps when they were still three feet from setting down.

“Docked, closing bay doors,” Edwards announced. Sounds outside the hull became gradually audible until the heavy bang of metal meeting metal vibrated through them to be replaced with the hissing of pressurizing air.

“Equalized, clear,” Edwards said as she unstrapped and emerged from the cockpit area to cast her eyes over the shocked civilians.

Shocked with exception of Sharpe, who seemed mildly shaken but amused, like she’d just stepped off a fairground ride. Edwards couldn’t help but shoot the woman a smile and found it returned with genuine excitement in her eyes.

“Okay, everyone, relax but stay onboard,” Mark said as he stepped down the lowering ramp to hit a button on a wall intercom. “Bridge, shuttle bay,” he barked.

“Yo, bridge here, all good?” came the unprofessional response. Mark tried to keep the annoyance from his voice when he answered but failed to eradicate all traces.

“Shuttle bay secure. Advise us ten minutes prior to jump lane departure. Out.”

He walked back up the ramp and into the cockpit where he accessed another encrypted channel to talk to the CIC onboard the carrier.

Exchanging a few words, he checked his watch and wished them luck before leaning back in the chair.

“Four hours,” he said, the weight of the flotilla’s fate weighing heavy on his mind.

* * *

“Have you been doing this long, Major?” Sharpe asked, startling Mark from his task of reviewing the ground maps of the target.

He looked up to see the wide eyes of Aubrey Sharpe watching him frown at the backlit screen and put it down. He was startled because he’d thought she was asleep from the look of her when he’d last checked.

“When you say ‘this,’ what exac—”

“I mean covert military work, specifically. Work like this,” she interrupted.

“I was in active special operations service during the last conflict, and before that I served in the Marines and as an officer in the army,” he said, not sharing any information that went further than what her clearance level would uncover.

“And do you enjoy it?”

The question threw him a little. It threw him so much that he frowned and gave it genuine thought before answering.

“I enjoy it more than I’d enjoy sitting back behind a desk, or taking orders guarding some back-ass—I mean, backwater mining colony in the outer edge of nowhere,” he said finally.

“But what about a life outside of the military? What could you see yourself doing?” she pressed, making Mark feel a little uncomfortable at the way she was steering the conversation.

“Right now that isn’t a consideration, so I’ll jump that lane when I get to it,” he told her, speaking with a tone that implied he was shutting down that avenue to her.

“And what about you, sir?” she asked, sitting up a little and involving Mac in the conversation.

“Huh?”

Sharpe laughed lightly at his gruff response and phrased the question another way. “What would you do, if you weren’t in the military?”

Mac glanced at Mark as if to ask, “This lady for real?” before he gave her the honest answer with a shrug.

“If I wasn’t already a marine, I’d join the marines,” he told her. “And you can call me Mac, or Staff Sergeant if you wanna be all formal. Same with Anders there,” he nodded to his fellow marine before jerking his chin up in the general direction of the cockpit. “That’s Edwards, she’s a captain, and she’s air force but we let that slide on account of her being a good zoomie.”

“I’m sorry, a… zoomie?”

“Pilot. You know… zoom?” Mac asked, hoping she’d understand and adding the mimed hand movement to go with the word. Mark laughed, not at the explanation but at the way Mac always fell back into acting as if he possessed about an eighth of the intelligence he truly had when meeting others. It probably went back to his days as a grunt, when acting competent earned a marine all kinds of rewards like extra responsibility that came without pay because it would look good on their next review.

His smile dropped away as he thought about Barton, a newly promoted sergeant posted to some isolated outpost so far from home it was like they’d never get back there.

Postings like that invited some choice behavior from NCOs inclined toward bullying their people, and he hoped their new friend hadn’t suffered from it.

He wasn’t against discipline, but he believed that discipline came from within and had to be nurtured like a small flame in the cold. People had to want to succeed before they did, and he never believed that screaming and bawling in a recruit’s face was effective the second that recruit completed basic. It happened in basic to break down the influences from the outside, to shave away the edges and carve a marine so they all started from the same place.

He never had to make his team stand at attention to be inspected, nor did he order them to be on the parade ground at zero-stupid-thirty to be forced to exercise, because in his opinion, motivation was infinitely better when it had the word “self” precede it.

He thought more about Barton, wondered how he was performing through selection, and felt zero regrets for pulling a couple of strings to get him invited on the next intake.

He hadn’t been untrained by any stretch of the imagination, but the way he performed on their last mission was one hell of an audition, and one that made the strings worth pulling. Everything after that was up to him.

“Yo, shuttle bay, our exit’s coming up in ten,” the disembodied voice called from the wall speakers out in the bay to end the conversation. Mark stood and walked to press the button and acknowledge the information before telling the others to gear up.

Chapter 12

Near New Liberty Space

The flotilla emerged through the unguarded convergence point and into open space on the edge of the system where New Liberty sat in contested waters.

The first wave, comprised of three destroyers from the Federal Fleet of Africa’s forces, rapidly moved apart so as not to make a tempting target for some high-yield munition, and fired what was effectively huge scatter guns from their bows to cover a cone of space ahead and around them.

Combined with those guns thumping out shrapnel, the three ships fired off active sensor pings to detect the impacts of those projectiles against the stealth-coated hulls of hidden killers.

Almost immediately, their displays lit up with the warning signs of torpedoes and other weapons as the hidden piquet of enemy opened fire with a devastating salvo that prompted every gun on the destroyers to open up in an attempt to degrade or destroy the incoming munitions, lighting the black void up in an eerie display of sparks and flashes without the expected soundtrack such a savage and sudden battle would deserve.

That sensor data, broadcast on an encrypted data channel to all ships in the flotilla, was immediately accessible to the next three ships to emerge from the jump lane, enabling them to put their guns to good use in an instant.

The largest of those three ships, the Japanese battleship Katori, sent a thunderous salvo of kinetic munitions into one seemingly empty part of space to be rewarded with the bright flashes of explosions instantly doused by the void, as not one but two small stealth boats came apart and tumbled out of formation.

In the midst of the melee, visible to both sides through analysis of the sensor data, the CSS Silence slipped through the fight and burned hard for New Liberty Terminal, both as a ruse that the enemy would believe the representative had gotten through their trap, and to provide advance word of the situation around the colony ahead of the flotilla’s arrival.

Behind the Katori, their guns flashing to light up the black expanse, came the fighters of the CSS Saratoga which were already deploying as the ship emerged from the jump lane.

Wave after wave of Vixen fighter bombers flew in formation to launch missiles in a blaze of action until, just as suddenly as the raging battle had begun, it stopped.

Intermittent bursts of fire at a suspect piece of debris or at the coordinates of an untrustworthy sensor reading followed until the allied flotilla ships remained as masters of the void with only debris sparking and tumbling through space to say there was ever even an enemy there in the first place.

“Report,” barked Admiral Crossley from the bridge of the Saratoga through the open link to his ship’s combat information center. The response came immediately, and he listened intently for bad news because he was a man who always expected the worst to avoid disappointment sapping his resolve.

“Sir, five enemy stealth boats destroyed. Sensor readings indicate twice that number withdrew when we emerged from the lane.”

“And the Silence?” he asked, again expecting the news that their boat had been hit in crossfire and was at least damaged.

“Free and clear, Admiral. Sent a signal at a hundred thousand clicks.”

Crossley smiled and leaned back in his chair before asking the next unsavory question on his lips.

“BDA?”

“One fighter dead in the water, SAR crew inbound, one lost, and one of the African destroyers took a major beating. Don’t think she’s good to continue unless they can get her under control.”

“How bad?” Crossley demanded through the medium of a groan, sounding more like a disappointed dad being told what his kids had done to the house while he was out at work.

“Lost engine power, currently in a slow spin. Wrecker crews are handling it and… stand by… Sir, their captain thinks he can get her under control but he’s going to have to withdraw.”

“My compliments to Captain…?”

“Adebayo, sir.”

“My compliments to Captain Adebayo. Relay that they fought well and opened the door for our allies in this sector. Request at least a pair of frigates to escort him back to Midway; frigates rearm and get their asses back to this sector,” Crossley ordered.

“Sir, that’ll take them two days at least,” the watch officer explained as if the senior man needed to be told.

“Aware, thank you, Commander,” Crossley said icily, letting the officer know he’d come perilously close to insulting the admiral’s intelligence. He tapped the controls to kill the link to the CIC and requested priority broadcast to the entire flotilla.

“All hands, this is Admiral Fader onboard the Saratoga. Damage crews get to work, push out our picquets and hold this emergence point. We’re part of something much larger than just this corner of space and you’ve done me and yourselves proud thus far. Keep it up. Saratoga out.”

* * *

“They should’ve come out by now, right?” Edwards asked Mark quietly, so her voice didn’t carry back into the rear of the shuttle.

“Fourteen minutes ago,” he answered absently from the co-pilot’s chair.

“Meaning…”

“Meaning nothing. Either they punched through and drove off whatever was lurking there, or they didn’t. Either way, this part of our mission remains unchanged.”

Something in the way he spoke, flat and emotionless, jarred her. She’d seen him like this before, seen him cold and almost inhuman, but that had always been at times of intense pressure, so she dropped the subject and concentrated on doing her part to the best of her ability. That meant flawlessly, something which was well within her skill set, and her hands gripped the two sticks ready to blow the bay doors and burn hard for the planet in case things looked like they were going to go wrong.

They concentrated on the speaker, listening in to the channel as a way to get an early indication that things could go sideways, and immediately on emerging from the jump lane an ultimatum was broadcast, coming through loud and clear in Russian-accented English.

“Attention unidentified vessel, this is Captain Cherneshevsky of the NRC naval forces. Power down your engines and send identification codes and manifest immediately.”

“Hey, who there, boss, we’re just passin’ through,” came the same annoyingly unprofessional voice they’d heard on the intercom to the shuttle bay.

“I say again, unidentified vessel, power down your engines and transmit identification and manifest or you will be fired upon!” came the insistent and very unimpressed response.

“Look, we’re not affiliated. We’re non-combatant civilian traders—Shit!”

The ship shuddered lightly as the shockwave of a warning shot cut off the explanation.

“Okay, okay, transmitting ident and manifest now, but we’re here to pick up, not drop off, just… keep your finger off the trigger, okay?” the captain of the trader said with a shaking voice. There was a long pause while the information was broadcast and checked, but before any response could come cover the channel, Edwards slapped a hand at Mark’s left elbow to get his attention.

“Six of their ships are breaking formation,” she reported, pointing at the large central display showing their region of space.

“Are they encircling?” Mark asked before he had time to lean over and check for himself. Edwards didn’t respond because the answer was evident when all six disappeared into the jump lane.

“Reinforcing the other emergence point?” she asked hopefully.

“Possible. Either way they don’t seem that interested in us,” Mark said with evident relief in his words.

“You are cleared to proceed,” was the only reply the NRC captain gave.

A collective sigh of relief filled the cockpit as team leader and pilot relaxed. Mark twisted in his chair to call back to the rear, the movement made awkward by the armor plating and ablative suit.

“The NRC bought it. We’re cleared through.”

“Flight time to the primary planet is one hour and change. We’ll break off when they breach atmosphere,” Edwards reported confidently as a muted round of applause broke out from behind them.

Mac caught the gaze of Anders and rolled his eyes, prompting the other man to stifle a laugh.

“You’re amused, Staff Sergeant?” Sharpe asked, seeming genuinely confused at his laugh.

“Ma’am, just wondering why the round of applause is all,” Mac said honestly.

She smiled in a mildly condescending way before she explained. “It’s a form of relief, I think. Something that just happens collectively when a group of people feel the same way—positively—about an occurrence. We’re just happy, aren’t you?”

Mac shrugged. “Sure, that part’s done, but we still need to get off this tub, get to the surface, and get you to the leaders of this place for you to convince them where their place is before the NRC move in and take over.”

“I’m not here to secure a strategic military base for you,” she answered, surprising him at how she drew a line between her and the team protecting her.

“Excuse me for asking, Ma’am, but why the hell are you here then?” Anders asked, allowing some annoyance to creep into his words.

“I’m here to listen to the valid claims of the New Liberty leadership—a duly and lawfully elected leadership—and see if there aren’t any areas in which we can agree and find mutual benefit to all,” Sharpe answered.

“I hate to break it to you, but if we don’t secure an agreement of mutual benefit that sees our forces occupy this region of space, there’s going to be a shit storm everywhere else around here. You understand how strategically important this place is, right?” Anders asked in a tone of voice close to snapping.

“Alright, knock it off,” Mark said as he emerged from the cockpit. “The emissary knows what her job is, and you know yours. Either of you has a problem, you take it up with me.” He looked from one to the other until both offered a simple nod of understanding.

“Good. You’ve got an hour before game time, but everyone needs to be ready to react in case anything happens in transit.”

He turned to a ruck stowed in an overhead rack and ran a zipper down the length of it to retrieve a wrapped bundle. Pulling it out, he unwound the fabric and held up the Viking axe to briefly ignite the plasma edge to the curve of the blade before deactivating it and dropping it into the loop on his belt.

Taking their lead from Mark, Anders and Mac retrieved their own signature weapons and fixed them to their backs, which earned a few nervous glances from the silent entourage.

Only Sharpe met their eyes and she looked just as amused as she had before.

“You’re amused, Ms. Sharpe?” Mark asked, echoing her words to Mac she didn’t realize he’d heard.

“Just that, if you’ll forgive me, arriving for talks about peace and reconciliation surrounded by men armed for some sort of medieval combat is what you might call counter-intuitive.”

“Ma’am, we load for bear on our days off.” Mac grunted.

“And are you expecting bear, Staff Sergeant?”

“I expect bear in my sleep, that way I’ll never get caught out by a bear,” Mac shot back flippantly, but his response made her laugh kindly.

Mark said nothing, instead recalling memories of fighting with the closest thing he’d ever encountered that resembled a bear, in the form of a hulking NRC operator, and he knew that they didn’t take chances either.

* * *

“Ho-ly shitlets... Mark! Get up here!” Edwards cried out as her finger danced over the controls to make the shuttle hum and vibrate with the power-up sequence. Mark burst into the cockpit and stared at the display which showed three NRC ships as red icons, all of them orbiting the main New Liberty planet.

“Ah, crap, what are they?”

“Closest one’s just a patrol boat but the other two are serious. I’m reading two Voin-class light cruisers.”

Mark scoffed at the designation, knowing from experience there was nothing “light” about their orbital bombardment capabilities, having been far too close to being on the receiving end of it not too long ago.

“Scan further afield. Is there anything in deep orbit? Anything on an elliptical?”

“Negative,” Edwards answered immediately, having already scanned the rest of the visible system while he was thinking.

“Any presence on the surface or are they just hanging out up here?” he asked.

Edwards worked the controls but gave up with a growl of annoyance after thirty seconds. “I can’t see for shit. This rust bucket’s sensors are older than Mac.”

“I heard that,” came a draw from the rear which they both ignored.

“Would we be able to see more if we cut loose?” Mark asked, but Edwards was shaking her head.

“Be too much interference from entry. Best guess? Doesn’t look like the cruisers have ditched any landing pods, but I can’t discount dropships.”

Mark straightened and returned to the rear section where he raised his voice and announced, “Okay, situation has changed; we have a small contingent of NRC ships in orbit but nothing concrete to suggest they’ve occupied the surface.” He saw fearful eyes looking back at him from the entourage but noticed that Sharpe’s eyes were as implacable and unreadable as Mac’s or Anders’.

“We know the New Liberty leaders have bought a company of mercenaries in as protection, but it seems like the NRC might be a bigger threat to them than they think we are. Plan remains to get dirtside and engage in talks with the leadership, that way we can convince them that the NRC aren’t here to play nice and that we can protect them if they just come on home to our loving embrace.”

“And what if… What if the NRC are already there? What if the New Liberty leaders have sided with them?” one of Sharpe’s aides asked. Mark noted that the emissary herself blanched a little when her aide spoke, but he couldn’t say if it was embarrassment or fear leaking through her exterior mask.

“We’re not playing the ‘What if?’ game today, but if this colony is deemed hostile, then the government needs to know. If you’re really here to avoid bloodshed, I suggest you concentrate on convincing these people that we’re on their side. Now strap in, this might get bumpy.”

He returned to the cockpit and sat, yanking on the restraints to hold himself firm in the chair.

“And what if they are hostile?” Edwards asked quietly.

“Then the flotilla will hammer the ever-living fuck out of the colony until it’s useless to the NRC,” he answered, the words “scorched Earth” echoing in his mind.

Chapter 13

Barton

Hades

I was on the mats in the gym, fighting to keep my left arm from getting pulled straight while tensing up my neck against the pressure of West’s thigh. She was trying to force an arm bar submission, and if I was being honest with myself, she was pretty damn close to getting it. Only problem was that she hadn’t flattened me out far enough before she went for it, so I still had some purchase and could keep my hips up off the ground.

I was tempted to get to my feet and go for the hero slam, only with her legs wrapped around my neck in some odd juxtaposition of intimacy and attempted murder, I’d more than likely damage myself as much as I did her, so I didn’t give in to the testosterone.

And yes, I know what juxtaposition means. Get over it.

I kept my cool and I bided my time while I worked inch by inch into a better position, gripping with everything I had to keep my hands locked together.

She jerked, trying to yank my weak arm free, and in doing that I felt her ankles uncross and lessen the pressure over my neck. Immediately I drove my hands into her thigh beside my head and arched my back, and when she realized what I was doing, she aimed a hammer fist down at my face which I avoided by rotating hard into her body.

Busting free of her armbar attempt, I rolled her onto her back and immediately started fighting for position over her as her hips bucked wildly to throw me off.

Coming down at her with a forearm at about half power, she threw me over her head onto the mat and tried to drive a foot into my hip to complete the escape, but I slipped my right arm over the back of her head and wrapped it under her chin, keeping my hips over her shoulders as I tucked up and tried to flatten her face into the mat with my groin. She fought it for a few more seconds before slapping at my side.

We relaxed, rolling off each other to lie side by side and pant for breath.

“Best of three?” she asked.

“You mean five? That’s two-one to me.”

“Alright, listen up!” the DI responsible for the hand-to-hand phase called out. We stood and fell in to a loose half circle in front of him, but the grunts and heavy breathing coming from one corner of the gym took all our attention.

Now, you might’ve guessed there was a little friendly rivalry between the different branches, but by this stage we were more into a high-speed training course than a pass-or-fail selection, so that might’ve led the two guys still rolling around to think they wouldn’t get their assess posted back home if they fucked up.

Was it a marine and the remaining air force guy? Was it a ranger fighting a SEAL? No, it was two damn SEALs trying to hammer the living shit out of each other like the biggest dick contest was called a draw.

“Knock it off,” the DI said, sounding a little pissed off now, which was something I saw as a danger to the ongoing survival of mankind. Seriously, this guy was light, lean, and possessed an air of pure malice under his calm exterior. He was cool, cool for a DI anyways, but the one thing you didn’t do was piss him off.

The two guys didn’t listen, and instead they started ramping it up to the point where they broke apart and just started unloading on each other like a pair of drunks slugging it out to see who could win the luckiest haymaker award.

The DI paced over to them, boiling with rage that his lesson was being interrupted, and just Spartan-kicked the nearest guy out of range of the other right into the wall.

Like some dumb animal past the point of sense, the one still on his feet rounded on the newcomer to his fight and wound up to send his next shot in that direction.

It happened fast—too fast for me to drop one of the twelve lines my brain came up with after the fact—but I’m pretty sure he didn’t realize it was the DI, otherwise the guy wouldn’t have done it. I hoped not, anyway, because I didn’t want to be in a team with a suicidal dude.

So anyway, the DI just leaned back from the swing, like he’d seen it coming sometime last week and set himself a reminder of exactly where the punch would go. He didn’t seem shocked at all, just arched his back so the fist sailed past his nose and unbalanced the guy who expected to rock his world with the blow.

Instead of that happening, he spun and stumbled, and the DI slapped him once.

Okay, I say slapped, but it was more like a thunderclap went off in the goddam room. Maybe the guy took the Odin moniker too far and tried to channel his inner Thor, but either way the SEAL took the thunderclap on the side of his neck and went stiff before slamming out slowly onto the mat with his arms locked out. The DI eyed the pair of them in turn and walked back to the rest of us shouting a single word as he marched.

“Medic!”

A team arrived in seconds, being posted literally in the gym when we were there and took the two guys away, one being transported on a collapsible stretcher and the other walking in a daze.

The DI watched them go, shaking his head in disappointment the entire time, then looked back at us.

“Discipline!” he barked, like we were supposed to understand what he meant. Luckily for me, he added more of an explanation.

“If you lose control, you hand the fight to your opponent. You keep a level head, or you die; it’s that simple, kids. Fighting isn’t about rage or power or aggression, it’s about control.”

Yeah, he was a man of many words, but I digress. He held up a plasma knife, similar in design to the ones issued to marines but with a more fitted grip. Judging by the fact that he was a Navy SEAL, I guessed that was his own.

“If you find yourself in a knife fight, you have already lost,” he barked, eying us all in turn to make his point.

“If you have not killed your enemy at a distance, if you have not blown your enemy to pieces, if you are not able to disengage and kill your enemy with your primary or secondary weapons and you find yourself in a knife fight, you must expect to get your dumb ass stabbed.”

Cheery thought.

“However, if you find yourself going toe-to-toe with Ivan, or some bowler-hat-wearing, tea-drinking motherfucker waiting patiently in line to say ‘s’cuse me, mate’ and stab you, then you better learn a few things to help unfuck yourselves.”

“Why don’t we learn how to use an axe? Surely that’s better than getting close enough to catch a blade?” a guy asked from the back of the group.

I could tell who it was from the bass of his voice vibrating the room. Valdez sounded like he was six-eight and three hundred pounds, but he was actually a little guy. Little like an ant was little, in that it could carry about a hundred times its body weight and not even notice. He was army, but I let that slide on account of him being a solid guy.

“You haven’t earned an axe yet, so you don’t need to know how to use it,” the DI said flatly, ending that conversation on the spot.

After two days of knife fighting, starting out with the rubber training blades and graduating to an actual plasma blade complete with the micro reactor to power it, we learned how to not get stabbed.

We also learned how to stab, how to slice and rip, where to attack in what way so that basically by the end of it, all of us got minor cuts; but if we washed out, at least we’d find employment as butchers.

If people ate people, I mean. Fuck it. Whatever.

It wasn’t like they taught us moves and made us all ninjas or anything. It was more like they taught us principles and let us pick how we attacked or defended according to them.

Out of the twenty ways they showed us how to do a thing, I felt natural or comfortable using maybe half, like my muscle memory was geared that way already so I just let my body decide what to do. We’d been trained to do this in the marines, but that was like a taster course compared to what we went through on Hades.

* * *

The two SEALs who decided to fuck each other up never came back to training, which left eight of us out of over a hundred that started.

They formed us into two teams of four—the preferred number for any SOG team—and started drilling us over from the beginning on the kill floor, pushing us to complete clearances and drills faster and slicker until the days merged together.

They started turning us out of bed an hour after we fell asleep, told us to gear up for a hostage situation, and ran a fastball briefing like it was for real. After no sleep it felt real enough, and they set us loose on the kill floor to enact the scenario they’d just briefed us on, before making us pick it apart afterward.

We watched footage of the other team, who were housed in another barracks, and analyzed their performance too. Part of that was to drive up the competition levels and see if ego made us do anything dumb, but part of it was learning by analysis and finding new ways to get the job done.

One morning, just after I woke up with the blood-red wash of light coming through the windows, after hitting the head and brushing my teeth, I checked the board expecting to see a muster time and the gear we were expected to be in. I was surprised to see that we had an hour to get breakfast and report for a briefing instead of the usual fifteen minutes.

“What do you make of that?” West asked, standing beside me and fighting a brush through her hair.

“I make it a three-course breakfast and taking a relaxing shit in peace for once,” I told her honestly.

“I agree with the breakfast part but I might actually wash my hair properly,” she said as she gave up on the brush and left it hanging in the dark blonde tangle, slapping her hands on her thighs in exasperation before walking away to extricate it.

“Just shave it off,” Valdez called after her, straining to hear her muttered response and laughing. I shot him a confused look, so he translated it for me.

“She said if she got the same haircut as us, the only thing to tell us apart would be Fournier’s tits.”

“Hey, I heard that,” Fournier grumbled, looking down and tensing his chest, which looked pretty rounded where mine was flat as a slab. West’s was pretty flat too, even if they were a great shape, but she got her jokes in about it before we had the chance to.

“Take it as a compliment, big guy,” I said. “Slap a push-up bra on those babies and you’ll have engagement rings flying at you from every single marine on shore leave.” Fournier, bless his heart, stayed in character while he shot me his best Canadian attempt at a withering look. It was so believable I half expected him to apologize for it.

True to my word, I did have three breakfasts and actually took my time eating them instead of inhaling it like usual. I even sat and drank a coffee while it was hot before my gut tapped me on the mental shoulder and reminded me about the next part of my plan.

I won’t go into detail, but I walked out of that stall wearing a look of satisfaction you just can’t earn any other way.

I took a shower, a full ten minutes, and by the time I sat ready in the briefing room, I felt like I’d had a weekend spa break. Landry walked in and we stood, but he waved all eight of us down with a muttered “as you were” and took up a position in front of the lectern before us.

“It shouldn’t come as a surprise by this point, but you’ve passed the initial phase of selection. You’ll soon conduct survival, evasion, resistance and escape training, and if you are successful—by successful I mean you don’t freeze to death or expire by means of dehydration—you’ll ship out to conduct void training.”

He paused, scanning the room and I might’ve imagined it but I thought he lingered on me for a half second.

“Make no mistake, SERE training will be brutal, but it will also be accelerated. You’ll be trained in multiple environments before being tested with a final land nav evasion exercise during which time you will be hunted by members of the SOG support group and, if captured, you will be subjected to enhanced interrogation methods. These packs”—he gestured as envelopes were distributed to all eight of us—“contain your official cover story. I will not tell you when and what to say to your interrogators, that’s up to you, but I do wish you luck. Carry on.”

He nodded at us and walked out, leaving another DI to take his place in front of us.

“Take the rest of the day to learn your cover story. Be ready to move out at oh-six-hundred tomorrow morning. Dismissed.”

I stood, feeling a little confused by the relaxed attitude and leniency, but also eager to get back to our barracks and grill West on everything she knew about the phase after she claimed to possess some arcane knowledge of it.

When I’d asked Mac about the phases, he’d adopted the same technique as the combat instructors. He didn’t teach me specifics as much as he gave me concepts that would make sense when they became relevant. The only hard fact he gave me was that if I made it to the SERE phase, I shouldn’t fall for the line that we wouldn’t be captured if we evaded the hunter force.

“I made it all the way to the final checkpoint,” he’d said, rubbing his head and smiling like it was a fond memory. “I was walking up to the DI, big smile on my dumb chops, when two guys burst around the side of a truck and jumped me. You’ll get taken down in an ambush even if you make it all the way through, just don’t bust yourself trying to make it all the way and make sure you hold enough left in the tank to handle the last part.”

“What’s the last part?” I’d asked, ready to take mental notes, but the bastard just smiled and told me to find out by making it that far.

I spent the rest of the day making sure my cover story was tattooed on my brain and tried to sleep, thinking that it wasn’t something I’d get much of for the next week.

Chapter 14

New Liberty Terminal

Edwards slid their shuttle out of the bay doors perfectly, but no matter how smooth the flying, there was no way to avoid the fact that they were doing so during an atmospheric entry sequence.

To put it in simple, or civilian, terms, what they were attempting to do was to get out of a ground transport and start running at the exact same speed it was traveling while it weaved and bounced over speed bumps. Add to that the concept that the transport was on fire and there were, for example, a few NRC guys standing way off who might notice you and blow up both you and the ground transport.

As soon as the shuttle slid clear, the turbulence rocked them hard, prompting a cry of alarm from one of the emissary’s aides quickly drowned out by the roar of burning air running over the shuttle’s hull.

Designed for flight inside atmosphere, it had some aerodynamic qualities, unlike the massive void ships which would find low orbit the closest they would ever get to a planet; nevertheless, the buffeting they took was severe by any standards. They endured it for as long as they could until even the two marines felt as though it would never end. When the thumping noises ceased and the deck stopped dipping and jumping in turns, a sense of relief washed over the occupants.

Mark, unstrapping from his seat in the cockpit, climbed back through to the rear wearing a smile as false as if he were selling genuine Mars rocks.

“Everyone all right back here?”

“We’re in one piece, Major. Might I ask why it was so necessary to endure that?” Sharpe asked, tending to one of her people and holding out a bottle of water for the shaking young man to drink from.

“Quite simple, really. Detaching before we entered atmosphere would announce our presence to the NRC ships in high orbit. We exited the trader as we breached atmosphere and ran a long tangent before we cut through, so even if any sensor data was recorded, it might show a small item flying away until it disappeared, simulating a lost plate of the hull’s heat shield.”

“And the reason we couldn’t simply land with them?”

Mark’s professional manner took a hit then, twisting his features for a split second into a look of annoyance that he’d even have to explain that, but he brought himself under control.

Not before Sharpe saw the look and understood it, however. “I’m sorry to disappoint you by not being a member of the military, Major, but try to explain it so us civilians can comprehend?”

Before Mark could answer, Anders sucked in a breath and spoke in a patient, slow tone. “Ma’am, simply put, the NRC will have, at the very least, agents in place watching the main comings and goings at the primary port for the city. Worst case scenario, they’ll have armed soldiers there which will lead to your detention and imprisonment,” he said.

“So the plan is to sneak in like thieves and conduct private talks?” Sharpe demanded.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Mark answered, growing irritated by the second guessing. “Look, the crew of that trader would be shot out of the sky if the NRC forces here knew what they’d smuggled through a checkpoint. As far as the Russians know, they’re behind enemy lines and the flotilla coming to drive them off is maybe two days away. They will get driven away, unless they come out swinging with everything they have and find some reinforcements, but that won't leave much of either side’s ships left to hold the damn place.”

“I understand that, but…” Sharpe said before faltering when Mark started talking again.

“Same as the people on the surface who our covert sources have spoken with. If the NRC knew they were talking to you, then they might just decide to hell with politics and storm the whole system. Take it by force. I get what you’re here for, and believe me, if you’re successful, nobody will be happier than me at the thought of the lives a diplomatic resolution would save, but there are still lives at stake other than our own. I’m trying to mitigate or at least reduce the threat they and we face, and I really, really don’t need anyone arguing up a storm every time I make a call.”

She didn’t open her mouth and close it again like most people in a position of authority would do when confronted with a speech like that. Instead, she eyed him for a second longer than was comfortable and nodded briefly before turning her attention back to her people.

Mark pushed the earbud for his comm firmly in place and called a test on their team channel.

“Gotcha good,” Mac answered.

“Loud and clear,” Anders said immediately after.

“Five by five,” Edwards said to complete the set before continuing with relevant information. “Dirtside in three and change at target coordinates.”

“Understood. All right listen up for the part you weren’t told until now,” Mark announced. “Elements from five-five were ordered here almost a month ago. They requested additional resources for added mission capabilities should the need arise, which is why Coates is out here with them. Long and the short of it is that this place is critical to the war effort in this sector. The mission priority remains to protect the VIP and allow her to conduct talks with the leadership here, but the secondary mission is to assist and support five-five and their additional elements in crippling the strategic value of this system if it looks like the sovereign government of New Liberty Terminal prefers their kids to speak Russian. Got it?”

They chorused their understanding in the same order, the order established before the mission and so ingrained that they spoke in turn when not on the clock, and Mark returned to the cockpit to strap in for landing.

* * *

“Trader just landed. They look like independent outfit but still many Americans,” Federova reported to Komarov, who was leaning up against a wall where the harsh glare of sunlight couldn’t find him.

The Russian major swatted at something resembling a dragonfly but had learned the hard way that they were more closely aligned to some kind of mosquito analogue. The dragonsquito made an audible noise as the hard leather of his hand impacted it, and the thump of it hitting the duty ground was followed fast by the crunch of Komarov’s boot completing the fatality.

“We will check,” Komarov answered, speaking in Russian as his comrade had done, in the educated guess that very few people in a largely American colony city would speak Russian, and those who could—at least those native speakers of the language—were unlikely to mess with the two terrifying men.

They crossed the dusty square formed by one side compound perimeter wall and three sides of buildings to pass under an archway leading toward the arrivals area.

Komarov had seen and felt the trader come in, shielding his eyes from the bright sunlight as he looked up to assess and decide that the bulky trade ship had seen better days.

Federova’s words hadn’t so much piqued his interest as given him a reason to move, to do something, to break the unceasing monotony of wandering around looking tough.

For most of the mercenary company this required constant effort, but for the hulking Russians, it was as simple as gravity for them. They repelled people by their size alone, and that was before the knives and grenades and big weapons were taken into consideration. They looked more like two armed bears than people, and for the generally diminutive members of the Chinese mercenary unit, who as a genetic coincidence were as hairless as the two Russians were naturally hirsute, the two men stood out noticeably.

Two officers from the colony’s security forces were arguing over a tablet as both kept swiping to different files and attempting to shout the other down to accept their opinion. Officially, the mercenary outfit was hired to work under the direct control of the security forces to bolster their numbers during the uncertain times they faced, but all evidence Komarov had seen of this civilian army—of both civilian armies, in fact—implied that neither could fight their way out of a sleeping bag.

He didn’t break his stride, just walked through the middle of the arguing officers and snatched the tablet in their dispute to read the information for himself.

“Hey, what the fuck? Stand down, merc. Gimme that damn tablet back!” one of them yelled. Komarov didn’t turn to look at him, he simply held a finger to his lips hidden behind the beard and issued a calming “shhhhhhh.”

“Hey, asshole, he’s fucking talking to you and he’s a lieutenant!” the other officer yelled, having obviously put aside his differences with the man he’d been arguing with only seconds ago, for them to unite against the outsider.

The finger held up to Komarov’s lips turned into a shooing gesture with the fingers of his left hand, still without looking.

The two young officers exchanged a look that universally exclaimed, “the fuck does this asshole think he is?” and both took a step toward him ready to unleash all of their tiny authority on him.

Both froze and went silent when Federova stepped almost casually in their way. Although shorter than Komarov, he was still an intimidatingly large man and the look in his icy blue eyes was nothing short of murderous.

To complete the look, he smiled at them.

“Is bullshit. Daniil, look at this and tell me this is not bullshit,” Komarov said, turning and handing the tablet to his comrade. Federova swiped his stumpy finger over the screen a few times before grunting and tossing it back to the boys, who still hadn’t said anything else.

“Definitely bullshit,” Federova told him. “My cousin was—is—a trader, and you know what he says is the secret of success in that game?”

“Is it something to do with burning fuel and time on shipping an empty cargo hold?”

“He says to me, ‘Daniil? You know secret to trading? Is never to have empty hold.’ Even paying passengers, yes? Unless cargo here is very valuable and cannot wait, why did they come?”

“Arrival report lists no cargo waiting to be collected. Perhaps we go ask crew?”

* * *

“What do you know about the five-five guys?” Edwards asked Mark off channel as she flew the shuttle slowly through the air to the western outskirts of the city. The route via which she’d flown them took them through a huge V-shaped valley between parallel lines of mountains that equaled any of the highest peaks on Earth.

“I don’t actually think I know any of them. The only reason I know what team is on the ground is that I did the math and figured out Coates was here. When I asked Desoto about it, he just shrugged and told me, given how I’d figured it out already.”

“I hope they aren’t one of those all-jarhead teams,” Edwards groaned.

“You don’t like marines?” Mark asked, fighting a smirk of amusement as he looked ahead and seemed to pay more attention to where they were flying than she did.

“I like our marines, but when teams end up all one way it gets a little too… weird, you know?”

“Yeah, some biscuits have no chance of not getting soggy,” Mark said almost wistfully.

“Gross. Still, could be worse. They could all be SEALs...”

“That goat would have zero chance of staying a virgin,” Mark said with a laugh as the shuttle dipped and Edwards flared the maneuvering thrustors to level them out for landing.

Unlike a shipboard landing, there was the full weight of gravity to contend with, almost equal to the Earth’s, and no matter how gently she was putting their bird down, their spines all compressed a little when they settled into the dust that covered the ground beneath them.

Mac held out a hand to Sharpe and her people, showing them a flat palm and adding the words in case the actions didn’t make it obvious.

“Wait one,” he barked before standing in a ready position by the small side door close behind Anders. Mark slipped from the forward section and snatched his rifle from a rack beside the door and pulled on the charging handle to make it click with a resounding betrayal of intent.

The door hissed and pushed out before sliding to the left, and before any of the civilian occupants knew it, the opening slid shut again. Edwards appeared then, just as the shuttle was humming down to silence.

“Give them a minute,” she said reassuringly.

“What are they doing out there?” a young woman asked with concern.

“Just checking in with the reception committee, its fine.”

Mark went out last, heading directly away from the shuttle as Mac and Anders went left and right respectively.

“You Odin?” a voice asked. Mark swung his weapon in the direction the voice came from to find a man peering around a truck and pointing a rifle at him.

“Yeah, are you?” he said, not relaxing at all.

“Uh-huh.”

“Prove it!” Mark said loudly, cheek pressed into the weapon stock as it held steady on the man.

“You’re a dick!” came the response. Mark relaxed, his posture changing from ready to fire to ready to fire a little slower.

A man dressed in civilian clothing stepped out from the cover of a small transport truck. He was wearing worker’s pants and a long-sleeved shirt under a heavy chest rig that looked thick enough to hold two plates of neosteel. He carried the same weapon and his ensemble gave him the appearance of a man rushed into combat on his day off.

On his right hip hung the darkened steel curve of an axe head.

Mark relaxed more as three others, two men and a woman with hair shaved to the skin up one side, all emerged from cover to stand with weapons held in relaxed positions. Mark stepped forward and let his weapon hang while offering his hand for the guy to shake.

The two men greeted each other curtly.

“Harlan, Nine-Five.”

“DeLuca, Five-Five. Welcome to New Liberty Terminal.”

Mark nodded his thanks and took in the man before him. He was a weird amalgam of what people thought SOG guys looked like and what they actually looked like. He was short—a head shorter than Mark—with wiry, bowed legs that looked like he’d either ridden horses all his life or, more likely, he’d been carrying twice his bodyweight on his back for the last ten years or more.

To complete the odd look was a set of shoulders that belonged to a man maybe twice his size, complete with wide upper arms that stretched the material of his shirt. Above that sat a mop of unruly black hair and thick, dark eyebrows. His whole look made Mark think of the word “swarthy.” But there was a part of him that still existed in the world where a person couldn’t just come out with words as if they had no consequences. This part of him fell back on assuming an Italian-American lineage.

“What’s on?” Mark asked, jerking his chin in the direction of the distant buildings.

“Town’s packed with security forces and a bunch of mercs from some Chinese outfit. My team INFIL’d over a few weeks and we got ourselves set up under cover of private business, but heading into the center is pretty sketchy.”

“IOA?” Mark asked, eyebrows knitting at the information.

“What?”

“The private business outfit.”

“Oh, yeah, all shell companies and shit, you know how they are,” DeLuca explained.

“Yeah. Who you got?”

“That’s Scott,” DeLuca said with a nod to a beard wearing tactical gear and carrying a rifle, before waving a hand at the other two of his team.

“Bryan and Louisa,” he finished, indicating the woman with the severe hairdo and another guy who was every bit the gray man, so much so that Mark had to concentrate on him to make out any real details.

“You got more in the AO?” Mark asked, lowering his voice and stepping closer.

“Oh, sure, we got Krupnick and Coates further out with two more guys spotting. All told I got nine on planet but between you and me, I’m a lot happier now you’re here with a ride out. Shit, my pilot was greener than a fresh booger.”

Mark smiled and picked up the mention of Coates’ name. He saw the smile mirrored on DeLuca’s face after the sour look regarding his pilot faded.

“How you getting on with our Claymore?”

DeLuca laughed lightly and shook his head which Mark took to mean he’d tell him later.

“Leave the bird here, should be fine. Jump in and we’ll get you back to the safehouse about four clicks from here.”

“Comms?” Mark asked, earning a pained shake of DeLuca’s head.

“Short range is okay, but much more than that and we’re compromised. We’ve got no encrypted channels open to us on this damn rock.”

“Privileges lost with the outgoing administration, I guess,” Mark answered. “What else we got?”

“IOA agent installed with the new government leaders—he dropped cover to make contact with us, so either way he’s burned when we’re done here. There’s more up on the station but that’s not our bid.”

“Another team in play up there?”

“Uh-uh, more spook shit, I think. Blind plays. Infrastructure denial,” DeLuca said distractedly. Mark nodded knowingly, unsurprised that their government would be looking to cripple the system’s resources if they lost all hope of maintaining control over it.

“Makes you wish for a good, old-fashioned annexing, doesn’t it?” DeLuca asked, turning to treat Mark to a raised, bushy eyebrow.

“We’d have to keep a strong military presence here forever if we did that. When a colony’s been established for this long, they start to think of themselves as separate, you know?”

DeLuca stopped and looked up at Mark, seriousness written all over his features.

“Yeah, well I hope your emissary can talk the talk, huh?”

Chapter 15

Barton

Hades. Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape Course

I actually enjoyed SERE training.

No, for real, I did.

I knew the course evolved over the few hundred years since it started during one of the many conflicts between nations back on Earth, and to cope with all the different kinds of terrains and weather systems on all of the planets in our territory would take years, but the basics could be applied everywhere.

Water, shelter, calories; that was what it effectively boiled down to. Oh, and the biggest one: “don’t get fucking captured.” I kept that one in mind all the time.

Anyway, the course was a staple of special operations all over the galaxy, along with pilots and aircrew, obviously because it stood to reason they’d be getting shot down with us, but all SOG guys reckoned their own training was superior.

The SEALs were, without fail, insufferable jerks because they reckoned themselves to be the best of the best at it. If there’d been any MARSOC marines left on the course, they might’ve had something to say about it, but honestly now there were so few of us left, cracks were starting to appear.

The rivalry shit held no damn interest to me, but when some fucking squid started running his mouth about the corps? Well, I had a duty bestowed on me by God and nation to address that shit.

The ones who didn’t really go in for that crap unless it got aimed right in their faces were the army guys. They seemed to have a pretty high standard when it came to discipline, which hurt me to admit, being a marine, but I started to admire them a little.

They didn’t have to make sure everyone knew how hard they were, not like the SEALs, and I appreciated that.

Anyway, SERE training, yeah… it was fun. I mean, it was grueling shit that nearly drowned me, killed me by dehydration and exposure, but when I made it through, I had to admit I was happy to do the rose-tinted glasses thing. Maybe I was just glad I was still alive.

We started off with the basics of survival training, fire lighting, where to find water in different environments and all that great outdoors stuff. The DI for that phase looked like he actually lived out there in some cabin or something, but West told me about him getting stranded way outside the wire a decade ago with a whole damn company of Russians on his ass. This guy, shit, he walked out of there after something like three weeks and a few hundred clicks under his boots, so yeah, he earned his stare, you know?

After that part we got flown out over the course, got a full briefing, then had all our gear stripped. Seriously, if any of the guys left—I say guys, because West was the only female left and she was the first to claim to be one of the guys because, well, gender equality—if any of them thought they were going to smuggle a plasma lighter up their butts or something, they were too dumb to be there.

We got taken out one by one and went into the rollover sim, pretending to enact our cover story of surviving an aircraft crash-landing in water, and after that we were on our own. Dragging myself out of the water, soaked to the skin and frozen, to emerge into the hot sun, I stripped and squeezed out everything before putting it back on and shivering while I took a bearing and set off.

I think that part of the reason they adopted Hades as the SOG training home was because of the terrain and climate. The course was fifty clicks as the crow flies, but that crow wouldn’t be crossing a mountain range capped with snow and wouldn’t have to navigate dense woodland. It wouldn’t pass through what was basically a mangrove swamp that flooded twice a day with a waterline that rose and fell about eight feet, and it wouldn’t involve a stretch of desert that was about thirty degrees at night and easily a hundred and ten in the day.

That desert part was first, and pretty soon there wasn’t a part of my clothing that was still wet. I rationed my water as best I could but even that didn’t work out like I’d hoped. I put in hard distance away from the fake crash site, but when the sun got up high, I was forced to take cover in the shade of a big rock. I strung up my camo survival sheet, one of the few bits of gear we were allowed to have—it was that smart material stuff that mimicked the environment as best it could—and tried to see out the rest of the daylight safe from any eyes belonging to the hunter force.

I tried to sleep, to conserve a little energy, but the sand under me itched like a son of a bitch and my skin started to tingle. Pissed off, I looked at the sand and swore I could see the stuff moving, and then my head started to imagine tiny little biting critters in it that would eat me alive if I stayed there.

I freaked out, dragging down my little shelter and staggering off in the right direction before the sun was fully down. That was my first fuck-up, because I hit the mangrove-type swampy low ground in the dark and moved for far too long during the light when there was a chance the hunter group might catch up to me.

I could smell it way before I walked into it, but the stink of the water was nothing compared to plunging my boot into it right up to the balls. It took me way too long to get out because of the tangle of slimy roots all gnarled up together, and by the time I’d managed to climb up into a tree far enough into the swamp to hide, it was already daylight again.

It was hot, but this time instead of a dry heat, it was like I was sitting on the stove to simmer. The shitty stink of the wet ground went away when the tide came in again, but the downside of that was finding my ass hanging about three feet from the water’s surface after not calculating just how high the water would rise.

That got me to thinking about the snakes.

Obviously, that kind of thing came up during the training phase, and one of the SEALs asked the DI outright if there were poisonous snakes there.

He’d explained that the swamps were home to a little critter that looked little but was actually pretty long and deadly.

“And what do we do if we get bit?” one guy asked.

“You piss on the bite and suck it out,” one of the SEALs said with so much confidence and authority in his words that I almost believed him.

“That’s jellyfish, dickhead,” West said, embarrassing him in front of the group.

“All right, knock it off. Point is, there aren’t any poisonous snakes on Hades,” the DI said, but the smirk under one corner of his beard made me figure it out.

“What about venomous ones?” I asked.

So yeah, my ass was hanging off a branch within easy reach of these stripy little bastards if one of them was minded to take an interest in it, and that didn’t exactly make it easy to get a little shut-eye.

When the worst of the morning’s heat had gone I started moving again. I went carefully on account of the water level dropping back down again to force me into picking my way over tree roots slippier than a pair of oiled-up boobs, and avoiding the mud that would hang onto me and never let go until I drowned with the next tide.

It took me two full days to make it through about five miles of swamp, and by the end of that, I had no water left and only a couple of ration bars.

I was constantly wet, stank like sewer mud, and had gone way past the point when giving up looked like a viable option. Seriously, I was such a mess in the mangrove swamps that I didn’t even bother unzipping to take a piss.

The swamp gave way to higher ground and the footing became solid again, which meant I was able to put some speed on and get free of it before the day got hot.

Only it didn’t get hot, because I hadn’t realized how much elevation I’d gained and actually started to feel a nasty chill setting in.

I was facing a choice then. Do I stay put and consolidate, or do I push on?

Consolidation was good in that I could find water, eat something, get some real rest, and set myself up for the next phase. If I didn’t wait and just pushed on, I’d only have to consolidate before the part where I had to climb over a damn mountain top. The idea of trying to light a fire in colder temperatures with less oxygen didn’t fill me with confidence.

I decided on a compromise, pushing further into the dense woodland before finding a sweet little cave that was (a) dry and (b) uninhabited. Bonus points for finding a fresh spring nearby that only tasted a little sulphureous, which we were told wouldn’t affect us too much.

I washed and dried my gear, treating myself to a little fire during the day, and held out each little patch of my gear to cook over the little flame. Putting it back on, even though it was stiff and a little damp on the seams, made me feel like a new man.

For added bonus, some dumbass snake thing—not a venomous one but a kind of constrictor that lived in the woods—decided to slither on by and check me out. Little or not— I mean, those things were supposed to grow to like twenty feet or more—I still didn’t feel like getting bitten by it, because we were told they had backward-facing teeth so that when they got a hold of something, it was going to die eventually even if the bastard couldn’t swallow it whole.

I pinned it with a long stick and drove the tip of my knife through its head before waiting about fifteen minutes for the body to stop going batshit like a whip. Cheating and starting up a new fire by burning shavings of wood with my plasma blade, I stuck little chunks of the snake meat onto twig skewers and had myself a little solo barbecue minus the beers.

You remember I said about rose tinted glasses? Well, snake meat tastes like leather soaked in piss. And I don’t mean normal piss. I mean get so drunk on tequila that you wake up wearing a skirt in a jail cell and take a much-needed piss, the kind of sting your eyes stuff. And I reckoned that the little bastard had about a thousand bones in his skinny little body.

As I continued my banquet, again these are intentionally fond memories, I found what the snake had eaten and poked at the soggy body of what looked like a cross between a rat and a squirrel. It was like roadkill but given what I was eating, I couldn’t judge.

I won’t describe what happened about five hours after that, but it wasn’t good.

I spent another two days in the woodland, wasting a lot of time as the trees were so thick in places, it was difficult to maintain a bearing. I also had to double back on myself more than once when I’d walked into a ravine that had no way out.

Twice I heard what I guessed was the hunter force—one time knowing it was them because a dog barked—and I resigned myself to finding cover and waiting out the rest of the day to be sure they were gone. I don’t know why I didn’t just get myself captured, which wouldn’t mean I’d failed at all, but something inside me wanted to complete the course.

It rained, which was good for hydration but not so much for spending the long dusk and dawn periods walking and chafing just about everything.

As much as they tasted like piss, the couple of snakes I caught kept me going with enough to make it up and over the snowy peak. One of those times when you just had to dig deep and get it done. Dropping down the other side and laying eyes on the final checkpoint, I felt a little skepticism.

I decided to sit tight and keep observation on it, and sure as a stripper wanted a diamond ring, I watched one of the guys from the other team walk in all pleased with himself,. As I expected, three dudes in black tactical gear took him down, bound his hands with speed cuffs, and bagged him to be carried off.

I stayed where I was, watching intently, and I swear to God, I was snuck up on by a damn ghost.

The first I knew about it there was a gun barrel pressing into the middle of my back. Not the back of my head where I could just move a few inches and not get shot, but right in the center of my spine below my shoulder blades.

“Hands,” a voice whispered. I, being the kind of guy to know when I’m beat, put my hands up and let it happen.

* * *

Do you know what a stress position is? I’ll tell you. It’s hell, your ex-wife and her mother, chronic back pain, a conversation with a vegan firefighter and a boot camp all rolled into a thirty-minute period.

I got bundled into a truck upside down and bounced over some shitty terrain for what felt like an hour. I tried to keep count, just for something to do to keep my mind sharp, but that worked for about five minutes.

I got dragged out, screamed at with some choice words I didn’t understand on account of them being yelled in Russian, and forced to stand with my knees bent at a ninety-degree angle and my back against a wall, still with my hands bound in front of me.

Every time I slipped, I got yelled at again and shoved back into position, until after some time between what felt like thirty minutes and four days, I got marched into a room and had the blackout hood pulled off my head.

“Candidate, this conversation is not part of the resistance phase course, do you understand?” a uniformed DI said. I didn’t know if I should acknowledge that or not, but he kept talking.

“If at any time you wish to voluntarily withdraw, you simply state that you need to speak to the SDI and withdraw. Do you understand?”

I let a little nod come out in case that was wrong, but he seemed satisfied with it.

“At all times, the phase will be monitored by medical teams in place. You may get pulled out of the course if they deem you are not physically or psychologically coping with the pressure. Do you understand?”

I nodded again and the hood went back over my head. After that I was introduced to something called a squat cage, which, you guessed it, was a tiny personal prison made for the sole purposes of misery and pain.

I couldn’t stand up in it because it was too short, and I couldn’t sit down in it because it was too narrow, so I spent the entire time hunched over with my back and legs burning. I know, I know, you’re wondering why I didn’t just lean against the bars, right? Well, because I was buck naked, and the bars were freezing cold and covered in sharp rust.

With our clothes went the hoods and cuffs, and they deliberately put us side by side in case we’d be tempted to talk. One of the guys was in full character and asking the others who they were, like he was going for an Oscar. He’d cry and moan at the guards, who all wore full-face helmets, and say he wasn’t with us, but he gave up when they ignored him.

Still naked, I got marched through the cold to a room and forced into another position with my hands outstretched to lean against the wall and my center of gravity tipped so that if my hands gave way, I’d break the fall with my nose.

Before the hood went back on, I risked a look left and saw West being put into the same position a couple of paces away. Her skin was tight and covered in goosebumps from the cold, but she seemed to have this vacant expression on her face like she’d gone away to some happy place while this all went on around her.

That went on for another day at least before they started pulling us out for interrogation, and I was glad I hadn’t let myself get captured earlier if it meant having this shit to contend with for another couple of days.

When my time came around, I mentally prepared myself to get roughed up a little, but I knew I wouldn’t actually fetch a real beating, because it was still training after all. Instead, I found myself handed a warm set of coveralls with this synthetic lining that made me overheat a little after I’d been wearing it a while.

A cup of something so hot it was steaming was placed gently in front of me on a table and a woman sat down opposite.

I wouldn’t say she was beautiful, but without doubt she still had looks and I reckoned ten years ago she’d have taken the breath from a lot of guys, just walking in the room. She smiled at me, and that part of my brain that did things I had no control over, like breathing or getting an unwanted hard-on, just straight up smiled back like a dumbass.

“What’s your name?” she asked sweetly, only I saw the muscular form of her neck when she spoke, and I guessed that woman was as hard as cold neosteel.

“Mike Barton,” I said, careful not to give just my surname as an obvious nod to being military. The corps tattoo on my left arm gave that shit away but I wasn’t thinking straight, okay?

“Nice to meet you, Mike. I’m Amanda. Mike, tell me what you were doing out here?”

I hesitated, hoping to at least warm up with a few yes or no answers, but she went right into putting me on the spot. Everything was “explain” or “tell me,” so I couldn’t close off the answer with a yes or no response. She was good, and I was a mess, so I had to think twice as hard about it before opening my mouth.

“You were watching us. Tell me why.”

“I… I saw some guys grab someone, so I hid.”

“You hid? Tell me why you didn’t run away?” she asked, not skipping a beat.

“I… I was scared.”

It went on like that for a while and I kept expecting her to switch it up and start screaming at me or for two of the masked soldiers holding Russian weapons to burst in and lay a tickle of a beatdown on me.

She just smiled, and after a while she said I could go back to my room, so I made sure I slurped down the rest of the coffee before it got taken away and let them lead me outside.

That was where they threw me around in the snow for a little while and ripped the warm jumpsuit off me, which made the cold so much worse than before. My room, as she’d called it, was a damn squat cage again for another hour or three of misery.

The questions got harder and harder, and the techniques switched up every time so I didn’t know what the hell was going to happen each time they came for me, which they did about five times a day.

They stood me naked in front of three women and all took turns laughing at how small and shriveled my little marine was, but I expected that. I even managed not to promise them it was a grower because that would show them that I was still tough inside.

The absolute worst one that came after three days was being forced to watch two interrogators eating a hot meal; at least, that was the worst up until they got all six of us together.

I didn’t know two guys had been cut until then, but the one who was playing the victim early on was conspicuously absent. Five of us were lined up and given the warm suits again with a plastic cup of coffee shoved into our hands. It had no sugar or creamer in, but I really didn’t give a fuck by that point.

They marched West in, still naked and filthy from spending time in the cages and stood her right in front of us while one of the actors gave it his best Russian accent and demanded to know the truth about why we were out there. He pulled a gun and held it to West’s temple before counting down. When he got to a number I thought I recognized, yelling tree, I snapped.

“Okay! Okay, I’ll tell you, just… just don’t do that.”

West was released and handed a jumpsuit while a couple other guys muttered under their breath about me. One even called me a pussy, but I’d chosen that point deliberately to break into the cover story.

Hear me out.

If you get captured, you’re either going to eventually talk or you’re going to die through stupidity. The reason I hung on for what I guessed was four days was that, if this was a real op, anything I could say to them would be old intel and wouldn’t get anyone else hurt. At least it would mitigate that risk to a degree, but the logic was sound.

All but one of the others knew to fall in line when the cover story broke, because it was only ever designed to buy us all time. The trick was cracking when it was believable, and I thought the only female left facing execution was pretty believable from any standpoint.

Don’t give me that gender equality shit, it’s hardwired into our DNA, okay? I’m a protector, and even if you think I’m a caveman, it’s in my nature to protect people. I’d have done it for any of the other guys, only it might not have looked so authentic.

About a day and a half later they brought me in, gave me a hot shower, and fed me. They asked me to help them with something, and that something was to send a message home, so my people knew I was alive and doing okay. Of course I agreed, but I took the chance to send all the subliminal messages I could that made it clear I was under duress.

I accepted a cigarette, which anyone who knew me knew I hated, but I crossed my knees over one another and leaned forward at the camera, acting pretty feminine as I pretended to smoke holding the cigarette in the oddest way I could between the tips of my middle and ring fingers.

I smiled for the camera, told everyone back home how I was just fine, and made myself stronger by warming up for as long as I could before going back to a stress position without clothes on.

I like to think I got bonus points for pushing my luck and asking for something to eat, and I guess because I’d done so well in front of the camera, I earned a peanut butter protein bar for my efforts.

Score for Barton.

The next time I got marched in and sat down for the hood to come off my head, I found myself looking at two uniformed guys, one of them being a doctor, judging from his insignia.

“Candidate, do you know who I am?” the not doctor one asked.

“SDI,” I answered, still pretty cautious even though I knew it couldn’t be a trick. That would be them breaking their own rules.

“And where are you?” the doctor asked.

“Resistance phase of SERE training?” I said, not sure why it came out as a question but honestly, shit’s a little fuzzy from that time.

“Correct. Candidate, you have completed this phase of training. Do you understand? This is ENDEX.”

I don’t know why I did it, maybe it was the relief or the stress, but I sat there and cried my fucking heart out for a solid ten minutes. The senior drill instructor, God love him, even gave me a damn hug.

“It’s okay, son. You did good.”

Chapter 16

New Liberty Terminal

Aubrey Sharpe took the high-speed journey with dignity, but her entourage did not. It seemed to Mac that none of them had the first clue what they had signed up for, even though it was pretty obvious from the start that they were being smuggled onto the surface of a hostile planet to engage in secret peace talks in the middle of a war.

To him, it seemed pretty obvious that shit might get twisted.

He watched the emissary, actually saying the word in his head in a dumb, mocking voice, and found himself more than a little impressed by her. Other than the fact that she had skin like silk and that he was a sucker for a woman who carried herself with that kind of grace, he admired the fact that on deployment she kept her anxiety on the inside where it belonged.

He shook himself out of the trance, not wanting to be caught staring at her while his cogs turned, and focused on the drab landscape zipping by on the other side of the truck window.

“Losing visual in ten seconds,” a familiar voice came to him via his earpiece. Smiling at the sound of Coates giving her quiet report made him feel a little better because someone he knew was watching his back. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the other Odin team, more that he didn’t know them.

The members of Nine-Five knew a lot of people on other teams posted all over, but the members of Five-Five were strangers to him aside from the fraternity they shared. Passing through the same crucible of fire formed a bond, that much was true, but when your ass was hanging out in the wind like his was, it helped to know people.

The notion took a portion of his attention away, chasing down the rabbit hole of thought to that thing they all shared, and he found himself considering Barton’s fate.

He was the first to admit he had a soft spot for the kid, and that wasn’t just because the kid had saved his life and kicked a significant amount of ass during their last deployment. He felt something along the lines of responsibility for him, and not for the first time he considered whether pulling the strings of people who could pull strings to get him invited to selection was doing him any favors at all. Would he be better off guarding some little colony in the ass-end of a nowhere system? Would life as a marine sergeant be safer than what he’d volunteered for?

That last one was an obvious yes because the selection phase alone was likely to put him in more danger than he’d been in for most of his career. That was before he fought through SERE, or void jumping if he made it through everything else.

A glance at his watch gave him the date and he mentally plodded through to guess that the SERE phase would have ended by then, so if Candidate Barton was still in the program, he’d be about getting ready to jump out the rear of a transport at about eight miles up. After that would be zero-g training, but by that point, unless there was an accident or injury, there was little chance of anyone getting cut from the course.

If someone was going to crack under pressure by then, if they weren’t going to comprehend something crucial or betray a character flaw that made them a bad fit for the teams, it would’ve showed up already.

“Got you visual, road’s clear,” another voice announced in his ear, pulling back the last of his diverted attention.

“Okay, dangerous part over. Welcome to Casa de Five-Five,” DeLuca said as they passed under an archway and heavy doors began to slide together behind them.

“What have you got?’ Mark asked over the channel.

“Secure perimeter is about it. We’re vulnerable to heavy and air, best policy is keeping our presence on the down-low, rah?” DeLuca responded.

“I hear that,” Mark said darkly.

On hearing his choice of language, Mac looked up sharply in DeLuca’s direction and transmitted his own “rah” to both agree and convey their additional shared brotherhood.

DeLuca went up a notch in Mac’s appreciation scales then, given how he was a marine and a team guy. Turning to catch Anders’ eye, his other brother gave a nod to say he’d heard it too.

The doors lowered on the transport trucks and everyone filed out with a far more relaxed attitude now. Standing around in the enclosed square of the tiny compound, Mark made the introductions between DeLuca and Sharpe, letting them talk briefly while he listed his team, and she named her entourage.

“Knock, knock,” came a familiar voice over their channel, and the doors slid open again to admit two riders on bikes. One had a long barrel protruding over her round shoulder and the other couldn’t have been more than five and a half feet tall. Watching that rider removing helmet and goggles, Mac was struck by the thought that what he lacked in height, he more than made up for in resting bitch face.

Coates’ own above average height and lean, triangular upper body seemed to make the contrast even more obvious, which did him no favors.

“There’s my girl,” Mac said, throwing his right arm around her neck and attempting to do a kind of hug-stroke-takedown hybrid move. She slipped out from his grasp easily and smacked him hard on the ass before greeting Anders more calmly.

“Mac, Anders, this is Bilbo from Seven-Four,” she said, gesturing to her new buddy. Bilbo scowled and offered both men a nod, which left a frosty residue in the air.

“Good t’meet you,” Mac said, offering a hand to the much shorter man.

“Likewise,” he answered, scowling immediately as Mac stifled a laugh behind a cough at the sound of his unexpectedly hoarse, squeaky voice.

“Pay no attention to him, he wasn’t hugged enough as a kid,” Coates said.

“Or maybe he got hugged too much,” Anders added, taking his turn to shake the man’s hand. “Err, Bilbo, was it?”

“Yeah, name’s Tolken, and I’m short, so guys have been calling me Bilbo since forever.” He gave a shrug when he said it, like the name was unfortunate but he had bigger things to stress over than a name.

“Uh-huh. And how you getting along with our Claymore?” Mac asked, earning the same disinterested shrug from him.

“She can shoot,” he admitted grudgingly.

“He’s just being modest. He means he’s never worked with one such as me before,” Coates answered for him. “And he’s one hell of a spotter. Better than either of you two anyway.”

Both Mikes took the mild insult in their stride before the implication of Bilbo’s words dawned on them fully.

“Wait, you seen some action out here already?” Mac asked.

“Just some bandit shit out in the desert between here and the nearest mining operation,” Coates answered, seeing Mac pale a little at the mention of the word mine.

“Relax, it’s all surface stuff. No tunnels involved,” she assured him.

“Cool, cool, all first base over-the-clothes stuff here?” Mac asked, smiling broadly to cover the momentary shudder he’d felt.

“Right on, no rummaging down in the dark on this planet,” Coates told him before turning to give Mark her attention.

“Listen up,” he called out, getting everyone’s attention. “As of right now, this op is under my overall command. Me and my team cover the principal at every turn while DeLuca and his people maintain external security and overwatch whenever we move. Got a problem with something, speak up. The time for what-ifs is before someone catches a bullet and not after. Settle in, we move in thirty to make the RV with our contact.”

* * *

“Yo, Claymore, your boy DeLuca didn’t seem too happy with what the boss just said,” Mac observed. DeLuca had burned a stare into the side of Mark’s head when he spoke but didn’t offer anything to the contrary, so he must have accepted it grudgingly.

“Yeah, I don’t know what that shit’s about,” she answered absently before another call over the channel prompted them all to move aside and admit the last of their people.

“That’s Krupnick and Badger,” Coates said as they rolled in on bikes, pointing first at a man carrying an Mk20 sniper rifle like the one strapped over her own back.

“Krupnick and Badger? You’re just making this shit up now. How the hell would you get a nickname of Badg—oh… oh, I get it…”

The man carrying a standard SOG rifle took off his helmet to reveal a stripe of white running straight over his head where his hair had blanched for some unknown reason, giving him such an obvious appearance that Mac was almost a little disappointed that the nickname hadn’t been more inventive.

“Krupnick can seriously thread a needle, believe me,” she told her regular teammates as the two approached them. Mac knew that for her to give praise like that—especially about another shooter—meant the guy had serious skills, mainly because she was a huge douchebag to most people just for the pleasure of busting their balls.

The introductions were made, and when Krupnick’s unmistakably Russian accent was first heard, it almost silenced the group.

“Relax, I grew up in Oregon but my family didn’t mix with many other people,” he said with a broad accent that reminded the two Mikes far too much of Komarov and his killer goon squad. “My father brought everyone over to Combined States when my mother was pregnant with me. I have American passport.”

“Oh, uh, sure. Sorry, man, didn’t mean any offense,” Mac said, feeling awkward about his reaction.

“None taken, my friend. It’s all good. How long we got until we move out? I need to pinch a serious loaf,” Krupnick said, prompting Mac’s awkwardness to turn a hard left into amusement.

“Oh, shit. You’re in trouble now,” Coates said, nodding her chin in an upward jerk back at the transport where Edwards stood fuming at them.

Turning to see their pilot alone with the principal, they almost deflated a little and wandered back over to explain to Edwards when they could and couldn’t leave the woman’s side.

* * *

Thirty minutes came and went with barely enough time to drop their rucks on a cot and find out where they ate and where they shit before it was time to head out.

The sun was already beginning to set fast, so after they left the compound, they found themselves in near darkness before arriving at the meeting point.

DeLuca’s people ranged ahead to make contact and secure the area as best they could before the others arrived, and Mac heard the brief exchange over the comm to announce the all-clear.

Mark went first, rushing a muted conversation with a guy dressed in civilian clothing before calling the rest in. Edwards stuck body-close to Sharpe while Mac brought up the rear of the little group and Anders walked at the front.

As far as slick drills for VIP work went, they weren’t exactly running the manual, but they were doing it fast and effectively.

No introductions were made to the little guy, clearly the IOA agent, but they all followed him inside the building where DeLuca’s people were establishing a watch on all four aspects while Mark’s team stayed on Sharpe.

Entering into a drab room set up for a round table discussion, Mac laid eyes on five people who did their best to look welcoming, but the stress was plainly written all over their faces.

“Welcome to the independent colony of New Liberty Terminal,” one of them started grandly. To Mac they didn’t seem all that happy and independent, but he wasn’t a politician, so he didn’t pay it much attention.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. My name is Aubrey Sharpe, and I am here on behalf of the Combined States of the Americas and our allies,” Sharpe intoned with so much smooth grace Mac reckoned he could listen to her narrate the instructions for a weapon clearance drill and feel happy about it.

She went on, greeting them in turn and introducing her own people.

“I see there are five of you, and I have to ask before we enter into any kind of discussions, how confident are you of a majority rule in your quorum?” she asked, leveling the words at them like an accusation. The words were polite but to Mac’s ears it sounded very much like she was asking them if they intended wasting her fucking time.

Eyes cast to one another until the woman who had spoken first cleared her throat.

“We have the support of three more council members,” she said as confidently as she could manage. Sharpe did not smile. She didn’t give any indication of what she felt until she spoke.

“I’m taking that to mean that three of you have influence by some means over other members and can rely on them to support you, but that they are unaware of these talks?”

Hesitation hung heavy in the air before a single nod gave her the answer.

“An eight out of twelve majority is hardly inspiring, but it is still a majority. Now, of your four remaining leaders, am I to assume that they would be opposed to any such agreement between our government and yours?” Sharpe asked, still respectful in her tone and choice of words, recognizing their autonomy with grace.

More glances followed that started to annoy a few people before an exhausted looking man spoke.

“Two of them overruled the vote to bring in a private military contractor, claiming it was a security issue and not a political one,” he said. The forgettable man who had facilitated the secret meeting pushed off the wall and tapped at a pad before sliding it over the table toward Sharpe.

“That would be former Colonel Rodrigo Carrera, CS Army, hailing from Argentina originally. Holds himself accountable for the security of New Liberty and started a major recruitment campaign for additional security forces in the system and tougher measures on import and export. He even raised trading levies to finance it.”

“It’s really the only way we have to do that,” the apparent spokeswoman explained. “We hold the keys to some very significant resources here—chromium, gold, and lithium primarily—and many others besides but…” She trailed off, unable to find a way to support the actions of a man she didn’t agree with.

“And you know what industry needs those materials the most…” the intelligence agent said.

“Shipyards,” Sharpe answered, even though the question was directed at Mark. “Let’s not beat around the bush here, this system is vital to both sides of the war in terms of both resources and strategic location. Are we to assume that Mister Carrera has opened a dialogue with the New Russian Confederacy?”

Again, the nervous glances threatened to drag a sigh of annoyance from someone in the room.

“Need I remind anyone here that we are in as much danger from engaging in these talks as you are?” Sharpe asked lightly. “Our discovery would lead to charges of terrorism most likely, and all of us would be lucky if we were treated fairly as prisoners of war. Now, with that said, I believe it is in everyone’s best interests if there are no secrets, no half-truths, and no subterfuge?” She voiced this last statement as a question, placing the ball firmly in their court.

Spokeswoman squared her shoulders and answered without even a glance at the others.

“We believe he has, and the private military company invited to bolster our security forces are… well, they’re not to be trusted in my opinion.”

“So the NRC are effectively taking proxy control of the system under the guise of your declaration of independence,” Sharpe stated flatly. “Our allied governments would like to make you a counteroffer.”

Chapter 17

Barton

Nine Thousand Feet Above the Surface of Hades

“You ready?” the DI bawled over the rushing wind noise, even though I was on the open comm channel, so I got the yell in stereo. He had a flat hand held vertically and leveled right at my chest in that way senior NCOs loved to do. I gave him an exaggerated nod, even adding the internationally recognized sign for “okay” with my right hand. He could’ve heard my verbal response through the same channel, but we were told to keep it simple.

I stepped up to the slanted floor of the open rear ramp and felt my calf muscles bunch from the angle of the deck. I took three long, steady breaths and glued my eyes to the red light ahead of me. I concentrated so hard it took me a half second to react when it switched to green without warning, and I took two strides toward the gaping black hole where the wind tore at me and sucked me out into nothing.

I went with it, diving with my last step to embrace the literal suck before I found myself outside the transport with all new forces tugging and pushing on my body.

I settled into a stable fall position and relaxed, feeling like I was in some sensory deprivation pod because there was literally no light anywhere in the sky or on the ground far, far below me.

This was my eighth or ninth jump that day, which made probably twenty overall, ranging from static drop lines for the incurably dumb to this one being my first nighttime solo freefall.

I had close to eighty-five pounds of gear strapped to me, complete with weapon and ammunition, and I had to admit to feeling pretty relaxed up there. I mean, the ground was coming to meet me at around two hundred clicks per hour, but I had two chutes and a safety override that would activate them at minimum safe altitude if I passed out or, you know, got distracted or something, so I wasn’t worried.

If anything, I actually found freefall pretty peaceful.

The HUD on the inside of my helmet visor flashed up a waypoint warning and I vectored a little to correct my course. Having had the theory of void training in my head for the last few days, I concentrated on making the right hand gesture as I adjusted my attitude because the practice couldn’t hurt, right?

I waited, reached the correct altitude, and deployed my chute before feeling the hard jerk of it catching the air and slamming me upright. It was weird because you got so used to falling through the air pretty fast that slowing down actually made it feel more dangerous, if that made any damn sense. Nearing the LZ, which was lit with red flares to make the scene look even more like the mythical hellscape, I reached up for the steering lines and guided my way in nice and easy, to just glide in the last two hundred feet and set my feet down when Hades woke up and dick-slapped me in the fucking face.

A sudden gust blew up from my left and almost collapsed that side of my rig, making me steer wildly to try and keep it fully inflated. That sent me into a spiral spin before another gust smacked me right up the ass and lifted me higher, which made my lines go slack. The momentary feeling of weightlessness wasn’t what I’d call pleasant, especially not with about a hundred feet left to fall, but it was nothing compared to the sight of my canopy folding in on itself when another gust just smashed it out of shape and tried to drag me forward.

I cut free, yanking on my emergency reserve immediately, and grappled with the lines to flare hard before my feet touched down and I rolled to take the backbreaking force out of the landing.

All of that I did on instinct, and yeah, I know that sounds cocky, but I did it. I wasn’t one of those natural free-fall guys, but I felt like I understood it enough to trust my gut.

I got to my feet and gathered up the canopy to watch the others set down all neat and tidy before one of the DIs ran over to me and demanded to know if I was okay. The words he used made it sound like he cared, but his delivery made it sound like I’d fucked up badly.

“Candidate, are you injured?”

“No, Sergeant,” I replied, pretty chill given what had just happened and the fact that my heart was hammering out a classic drum and bass set.

“Get your gear and report to the medic to get yourself checked over,” the DI ordered. With a mental shrug, I did as I was told, making the medic just as confused as I was because they hadn’t seen my apparently heroic moves.

“Just had to go and show off, fucking jarhead,” West said airily as she dumped her gear on the tailgate of the support truck and started stripping out of her rig.

“It’s not my fault if I was born with such an insane skillset,” I told her, adopting a haughty tone that almost came out like I was a Brit. In truth, I was doing that thing where instead of crying like a little kid at how close I’d just come to buying the farm, I decided to be an arrogant prick about it. It’s a thing.

“Insanity, yes. Skills? Not so much. Keep trying, sweetheart,” West said and hauled herself up into the truck before I could think of a comeback.

There was a debrief, during which I was both praised for my impressively colossal testicular girth and torn a new one for pulling a stunt like that so close to the deck, before we hit another tough theory session about void jumps.

“Now, does anyone know what the biggest killer of special operators is?” the DI, an air force dude who was rumored to be qualified to do pretty much everything in the galaxy, asked the group.

“Training accidents?” West answered. She was one of those eager beavers who had to be told by the teacher to shut up every so often and give the rest of us a chance to answer a damned question.

“Correct. And do you know what the biggest loss of life for us is in combat deployments?”

Silence hung in the air as everyone tried to figure out the least obvious answer that was most likely to be true. Mark’s words came back to me then, about how one NRC ship took the lives of more operators in one mission than had been lost in maybe ten years before that.

“The void,” I answered. The others turned to look at me, probably because the way I’d said it came out with more than a little melodrama, like there should’ve been some sinister sound effect right after I’d spoken.

“Again, correct. Make no mistake, the closest you will ever come to losing your lives is during a combat EVA, and that is before you encounter the enemy,” the DI said. He looked down for a moment like a memory had come to him uninvited, and the tiny shake of his head looked to me like a rapid reset before he continued, lecturing us about the physics involved.

* * *

We started small. We literally suited up and flew outside the atmosphere of Hades where two shuttles ships decompressed, and we drifted the forty or fifty feet between them.

We each had an instructor beside us, and everyone was on an active comm link because safety was key and there was definitely no other way to train for it than going up into space and doing it.

It was dumb, really. I mean, I had a lot of training before I jumped out of an air transport. Even then there wasn’t anything I could fuck up because when it came down to it, all I had to do was step out and fall straight down because the gear did all the important stuff for me. I guess you had to be psychologically ready to do something like that, and void training was no different.

What brought it home for me was the fact that this was the final phase of training before we knew if we’d made the cut or not, but like with SERE training, the fact that we were down to six from about a hundred meant it didn’t make much sense for us to get cut for just anything at that stage. If it was something insurmountable, then I guessed we’d be sent back, but if it was just a small training issue, then we’d be given the opportunity to adapt and overcome.

Void training sucked for some, like the meaty Canadian I’d been working with called Fournier, because he had all the grace of a penguin playing volleyball without gravity to keep him down. I actually didn’t mind it. In fact, it was probably about as unpleasant as a boomerang drop at the worst times, but that wasn’t the real issue.

You ever been up really high or out to sea on a boat all on your own, so that when you looked all around you there was nothing and nobody else in the whole world?

That’s what the void was to me, and I found that more peaceful than free fall. Literally nothing for billions of miles in every conceivable direction, like being in the center of the Pacific Ocean in a canoe back on Earth.

That feeling, that kind of existential dread and awe rolled into one, made me feel at peace. It was like I accepted how pathetic and small and insignificant I was to the galaxy and I was okay with it.

One guy wasn’t.

It caused us all a lot of stress to hear him breathing like he’d just woken up trapped under a collapsed building, and when he couldn’t get that breath under control, he started to freak the fuck out big time.

Dude was fine for the first three crossings, but when the distance pushed further apart, it was like he’d swum out to sea beyond his comfortable depth. The screams he let out messed with my head a little, and as much as the instructor beside him tried, he could not get that motherfucker under control.

He screamed so loud and so long that he hyperventilated and nearly passed out before they towed him back inside and took one shuttle to the surface. That was the last time any of us saw the guy, because by the time we’d used up all our air supply and turned tail for home, he’d shipped out with a medical discharge from selection.

We got back, decontaminated and stowed our gear, then hit the showers and got chow.

Yeah, I said decontaminate, because if you think this space is empty, I can tell you that getting peppered with what feels like rock salt is not a pleasant experience. Shit, we’d been inadvertently dumping so much crap in space for so long that some planets were like a junkyard in orbit. Some of that shit had a little radiation on it, which would spoil my appetite.

Before I could address that constant hunger, my name appeared on the board with instructions to report to the SDI.

“Ah, shit,” I groaned, racking my brain for how and when I’d fucked up enough to get my ass sacked from the course and settled on it being that last parachute drop. I walked to Landry’s office with my best explanations and excuses lined up ready to fire, and knocked on the man’s door.

“Yeah,” he grunted from inside, which I took as an invitation to enter.

“Ah, Barton, grab a seat,” he said, frowning at the expression on my face. “Relax, son.”

“Sorry, Command Sergeant Major, I…”

“You what? Thought you were in some kind of trouble? I said take a seat and relax.”

I did. Took a seat anyway, the relax part wasn’t coming easy.

“I heard about your stunt today. Pretty ballsy from what I’m told,” he said, smirking a little.

“I…” I shrugged, unable to stop the nervous smile from climbing up my own cheeks. “I didn’t feel like landing like a bag of shit and breaking my ankles is all.”

“Mission effective, I like that,” Landry said appreciatively. “Now, final ex is coming up and the DIs all agree you should be second-in-command of your team. You’ve shown a solid attitude and performed well, but your coolness is what my people are seeing and liking.”

The words came out of his mouth and crossed the air between us just fine, but my brain didn’t want to accept them in the order he said them.

“I… I thought I was getting cut,” I said lamely.

“What? No!”

“But…”

“Shut the fuck up, Barton, before you embarrass yourself. Now, I’m aware you spent some time as a squad leader, that right?”

I nodded.

“That’s good. Your team lead is West, but I doubt that’ll come as much of a surprise to you. Fournier and Valdez, what’s your assessment of them?”

“Solid guys,” I said right away. “Both good marksmen and dependable.”

“Uh-huh, and West?” I paused a beat before answering, checking the words I wanted to blurt out for the accuracy and their ability to land me in hot water.

“Dedicated and determined. A little rough around the edges when it comes to people skills, but I trust her,” I said, meaning every word.

“Good. That’s good. Barton, you recall when I told you how many teams I was under pressure to put out into the field in the next six months?”

He hadn’t told me numbers, but I knew he was hurting to get back to the fight and not spend all his time selecting and training candidates for SOG. I nodded, stupidly acknowledging facts I didn’t have, but he carried on.

“They want two new teams a month, or equivalent numbers to fill gaps in active teams. You know, they’re so short out there that they’ve had to do shit like borrow snipers from other teams because they couldn’t afford the numbers to deploy two Odins. That shit is downright dangerous in my opinion. It ruins coherence and compromises missions. Trust me, when you’re outside the wire you don’t need to be spending time finding out that the guy you’re in a trench with snores too loud or has an annoying habit you haven’t gotten used to yet. You don’t need to find out if your overwatch is truly gifted or not by seeing if the motherfuckers shooting at you start losing their heads, you need to know that shit in advance. You get where I’m going with this?”

“Not entirely,” I answered honestly.

“Let me put it this way. I’m proposing to send out full teams and not battle replacements, which is why the four of you I just mentioned have been working together. When you’re done void training and you’ve tidied up the last of the course with some foreign weapons and tactics training, I’m recommending you go out as a unit,” he said, looking me hard in the eye when he’d finished.

I felt a stab of regret then, foolishly wishing I’d find a way to get back to Nine-Five and not considering the fact that one of them would have to move on one way or another to create an opening for me.

“Barton, this would be the part where you thank me for my faith in you and promise you’ll make it through the rest of this course continuing to bathe yourself in the top shelf effort I’ve seen from you already.”

“Sorry, Command Sergeant Major, I… thank you. I won't let you down.”

“Don’t let yourself down. Now do me a favor and tell West I want her sorry ass in my office in the next four minutes. Verbatim now, you understand?”

I did. I wasn’t sure I agreed but I got it, and the experience of a guy in his position wasn’t something to ignore on any day. If he said that complete teams going out was the best idea, then who the hell was I to argue with him?

I jogged back to the barracks to find it empty, turning on a squeaking boot heel to trot to the chow hall where I located West easily and ran to her side.

“Landry’s office,” I told her, wearing an intentionally blank expression. “He said to get your sorry ass there in three minutes.”

West said nothing, just dropped her fork and stood to walk off still chewing a mouthful.

Chapter 18

Main Laboratory, BG-192

Weeks of travel away, on the dust ball that sparked this resurgence of galactic war, the operation to exhume and study the alien artifacts was one of the largest of its kind ever to be run.

The ancient remains of the facility, which they felt almost certain was not an alien craft, had raised so many questions that access to it was limited and allocated to the various different teams in time slots.

The cryptolinguistics teams went first on one day, followed by the xenobiologists and the archaeologists before King and his people could have at it.

“So explain to me your theory again, Doctor?” one of his junior scientists, a Canadian woman called Amelia, asked. He smiled, knowing the young woman was flattering him a little but he liked to think his idea through out loud among like-minded people. He saw science as a healthy debate that required multiple minds working as one, not the individual brilliance of people known for inventions and discoveries that changed the course of human history.

“The way we see terraforming is as a process designed to turn a planet into a replica of Earth, as a way to adapt and doctor an environment to be perfect and unadulterated to support human life, correct?”

She nodded.

“So envisage and imagine a planet that supports non-human life? What does that look like? What is the configuration and composition of the atmosphere? The core and surface temperatures?”

“So you’re saying there’s a way to reverse engineer the study of the preferred atmosphere to find out what the extraterrestrial life would look like?” she asked eagerly.

“That’s one theory, but I think we’re a little ways off that yet. What I’m saying is that this… substance, whatever its true and genuine function is, is a kind of catalyst designed to instigate and inaugurate that process,” he explained.

She hmmm’d and adopted a pensive expression while she thought about his words.

“What about…”

“Go on,” King prompted kindly, seeing that she was fighting with something in her head.

“It’s silly, forget I said it.”

“There are no bad ideas in exploratory science, Doctor Thorne. Even if what you’re thinking isn’t a possibility, at least we can close one door off and leave the path toward innovation and discovery a little less confusing,” King said, sounding every bit the professor he was.

“I mean, what if we’re looking at this the wrong way? What if this, the substance and the facility and everything, what if this isn’t a scientific experiment or a form of terraforming at all?”

“You mean what if it’s a biological weapon?” he asked, earning a shocked and worried expression from her. She nodded hesitantly.

“That is a strong and robust possibility, but let me ask you this: what if it’s a biological tool that outwardly appears to be a weapon, but is actually designed to assist in a terraforming process?”

“Okay, you’ve lost me now, sir,” she said.

“Look at what we fathom and comprehend about the substance. It affects carbon-based biological organisms in distinctive and diverse ways, and judging by our lab studies, the more complex and convoluted the organism, the more varied the response can be. From what we know about the effect it has on humans, it creates a joint enterprise approach with a singular goal in mind. From what we’ve observed and discerned by studying the local analogue of land crustaceans, it does something similar but on a very limited scale. So what’s the primary and principal question here?”

“What is the singular goal of the substance and its creators?” she asked. King snapped his fingers and waited patiently for her to say it out loud.

“To subdue any potential resistance to whoever—whatever—created it?”

“That’s definitely one way of looking at it,” he admitted thoughtfully.

“How is that terraforming?” she asked, confused.

“Adapting an existing environment to create a set of values that supports the creating lifeform’s ability to populate and procreate? Change the idea in your head that terraforming is simply making clouds in the sky, a water cycle, air we can breathe, and start thinking about the broader notion… perhaps terraforming is the wrong word, but I think it’s the closest word we have to begin to describe and define the process. Imagine our military had the ability to deploy tear gas globally before invading a planet. A way to subjugate any possible resistance prior to their arrival. Why, we wouldn’t need a military at all if that were the case now, would we?”

“So you’re saying it’s a chemical weapon?” she asked. King shot her a sad smile, as if to show disappointment that she was approaching the problem two-dimensionally.

“Or a chemical tool. Or a chemical and biological weapon with a terraforming goal in mind. Remember, we don’t know what effect this substance has on the long-term growth of flora and fauna. We don’t know what it does to the water systems and the sub-biology contained within, for one thing. There could be so many applications and utilizations for this kind of bio-technology that we haven’t even begun to comprehend.”

“Which is why the military want to weaponize every aspect of it,” she said, her features darkening at how mankind twisted every scientific advancement into yet more creative ways of killing one another. Something in the way she spoke, in how her expression morphed into something impure and unlovely, troubled King for a moment.

He liked to keep politics and personal bias far detached from the science, insisted on it even, but before him was a young woman clearly and deeply entrenched in a personally held belief that what was happening was wrong.

He smiled warmly, trying to comfort her after she seemed fearful that she had spoken out of turn.

“Doctor Thorne, I maintain and insist that my staff focus only on the science. True, people will always find a way to turn a discovery into something bad but that is the same of every invention and innovation in the history of our species. The harnessing of electricity allowed us to evolve to new levels, but electricity is also used as a weapon. Nuclear studies taught us how to split an atom and poison our own planet while killing millions, but it also gave us a couple of hundred years of clean energy that didn’t pump carbon into our atmosphere. Heck, even so far back as the first evolution of man we were using bits of sharp rock to harvest materials and food our own teeth and nails couldn’t give us access to, but how long do you think it took for one of our unga-bunga-ing ancestors to think, “hey, this sharp stick here makes a mighty fine way of killing someone from some other tribe and taking their stuff”? So yeah, science leads the way and human nature contaminates and corrupts it, but should we stop exploring? Should we forsake and abandon all attempts to make new discoveries because of this?”

“No, we shouldn’t. I’m sorry, Doctor King, I really am. I didn’t mean to speak out of tur—”

“It’s fine, Amelia, really. You go on and get me those blood works on the primate studies plotted in a comparison chart now.”

She smiled appreciatively and left his side, leaving him standing there like some wise old ghost from a time forgotten as the new wave of kids with fistfuls of PhDs came through, all of them born after he’d earned his first doctorate back in the stone age.

“Unga-bunga,” he sighed to himself as he watched her go.

“You’re losing it, Travis,” Sharon Laghari said as she appeared beside him. He smiled warmly down at her too. Even though he was still her senior by a decade, he felt that the two of them were at least the same generation, and coupled with the fact that they’d been the first ones to put scientific boots on the ground of that planet, they shared a bond like no others deployed there.

“I lost it years ago, Sharon. Just feeling a little like a caveman is all.”

“You mean the twenty-eight-year-old research MD with an interest in xenophlebotomy is making you feel old?” she asked with a sarcastic air of incredulity.

“Pfft. Xeno-this and xeno-that. It’s all just theory until we actually find anything xeno-useful,” he muttered grumpily.

“So there’s nothing useful to be gained from studying the creatures we find on all these worlds we can access? You think that isn’t ‘xeno’?” she asked, pointing at a reinforced glass box containing an eerily still creature dubbed the Ground Zero Crab.

King regarded it with unease, noting not for the first time how the “modified” crab-thing didn’t scrabble around unaware that the glass it could see through was imprisoning it there. This one, exposed to the… screw it, the xenoliquid. This one just sat still and watched those working in the lab like it was some low-rent mall cop, too lazy to stop any actual shoplifters but happy to stand there all day giving people the stink eye.

He shuddered and turned back to face his colleague.

“I fear I’m getting too old to be out in the field like this. Maybe it’s time I took that teaching job back on the New Texas colony after all?”

“Okay. One, you’re not old. You’ve still got five, maybe six years until you need to go into a home, and two, you think the xeno PhD crew can do your job?”

King laughed lightly, taking the insults for the compliments they truly were, and went back to work.

Chapter 19

Covert Meeting Facility, New Liberty Terminal

The discussions went on long into the night, with both sides giving up an inch at a time, which made the miles they were apart seem like an impossible void to cross.

Mark began looking at his watch testily after a few hours, covering his obvious irritability by stepping out to check the perimeter intermittently.

Mac and Anders rotated, one inside the room and one outside, relieving each other in turn, but Edwards stuck like glue to their principal like this was her big audition.

“I think we need to take a comfort break here, don’t you?” Sharpe said, surprising the other side of the table because she’d been on a roll and had forced admissions from them that they needed the help of the allied forces to prevent them from becoming an NRC outpost, but in doing so they didn’t want to relinquish their newly declared independence.

She rose, as graceful as her emissary title could imply, and Edwards rose with her.

The two women left the room, with Mac and Anders shifting position subtly so as to cover front and rear but not interfere with her free movement, and as Edwards passed by Mac to check the female toilets first, he muttered, “Told you you’d have to listen to her fart,” and earned an unprofessional swipe at his groin for annoying her.

“You’re clear, ma’am,” Edwards announced after checking the few stalls and finding them empty. Sharpe smiled and entered the closest one before shutting the flimsy door behind her.

“You know, Captain, I’m quite capable of peeing by myself. I’ve been doing it alone for a few years now,” she said, her voice echoing in the small ladies room.

“I know that, but this is for your benefit and not mine,” Edwards told her.

“Oh? How so?”

“Because if I wasn’t in here with you, then one of my other guys would be, and I can’t say much for their manners around people like yourself.”

The toilet flushed and Edwards frowned because she hadn’t heard the woman pee, let alone produce a Mac-predicted fart, like the VIP even did that with grace. Sharpe walked out and started to wash her hands thoroughly, talking to Edwards in the mirror.

“Your Major Harlan, is he not accustomed to polite society either?”

“Oh, he can pull off a suit as well as he can live in the field indefinitely. He’s… different,” she said with a shrug as she gave up trying to describe the man she’d had a crush on for the better part of two years.

Nothing would ever come of it, and if their personal relationship caused any kind of team friction, she knew she’d find herself rotated to another support role with SOG on an immediate basis with little or no explanation, so she kept it very much to herself. She’d heard of things like that happening in other teams all over, just as those who met the standard but failed the attitude tests moved from team to team until they found a home, but she didn’t want that shame attached to her file in any unofficial capacity.

If the military was inbred, then the special operations group and their wider support teams were some bayou backwater with no good roads in, where first cousins were totally fair game.

Sharpe finished washing her hands and activated the hand dryer to drown out any chance of conversation until it stopped.

Shaking the final drips of moisture from her hands, she turned a winning smile on the pilot.

“How do you think it’s going in there?” she asked, putting Edwards firmly on the spot. Before she could respond, the door opened amid the sound of chatter that stopped dead as soon as the two women saw them. Sharpe smiled warmly and slid by them with Edwards right behind her. Mac perked up when she emerged, moving ahead of her, but she walked past the meeting room and toward a balcony where one of her people was standing outside.

She moved through the doors as Mac started to mutter into the comm, but Edwards didn’t hear what he said on account of his trying to stop her.

“Wait, you can’t go out there—”

“There’s a fine line between living your life in fear and taking calculated risks, Captain,” she said airily, breezing through the doors and accepting a cigarette and a light from the thin man, then leaning back to blow a stream of smoke directly upward.

She saw Edwards looking at her and gave a depreciative shrug.

“I have the liberty of very few vices, and this is still one of them. That’s why I never get involved in healthcare negotiations!”

Edwards softened enough to give a light laugh at that and stepped closer to speak in a low voice.

“I think it’s going well in there. They want our help, but they don’t want to give up their identity. I know we’re a little stuck on the legal issues of giving up the mining operations, but they’re stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea.”

“And which one are we?”

“I said blue sea, not red,” Edwards answered with a lopsided smile which Sharpe answered with a bark of laughter and waved the hand holding the cigarette dismissively.

“Between us, I’m authorized to hand over total autonomy so long as we extract ongoing levies from the operation here equal to what the government is owed in terms of its investment. There’ll be certain minimum quotas for the resources the government needs but it’s a small hit to take to maintain control of the system. I mean, come on, we’re going to be out here anyway to deny the NRC control over vital jump lanes so we might as well be paid for it too, right?”

“So you aren’t planning to force them back under allied control?” Edwards asked, having listened to them argue that point over and over for hours.

Sharpe smiled at her and asked her own question.

“Captain, I’m aware your people go through a lot of additional training on top of the normal requirement for the rest of the army, so am I right in assuming you’ve been trained to resist interrogation?”

Edwards was a little taken aback by the sudden switch and accurate assumption, simply nodding her affirmative.

“So, if captured, would you give up the information you were always going to give up immediately, or would you hold out until those interrogating you felt like they’d won?”

“I see your point,” Edwards said, watching as Sharpe turned and deftly flicked the cigarette butt out into the darkness beyond the balcony, just as her earpiece came to life.

“I’ve got movement, three vehicles in convoy approaching from the east,” Coates reported coolly.

“Copy that. Krupnick stay frosty to the west. Louisa, get on the heavy. Bryan warm up the truck. Harlan, you copy all?” DeLuca rattled over the channel.

“Copy all,” Mark’s voice snapped back over the channel as he appeared in the doorway.

“Ms. Sharpe, I think we’ve pushed our luck enough for the night,” he said in a tone that invited nothing but agreement and compliance.

“Stand by… convoy veering south… confirm convoy moving away. Looks like a PMC patrol, over.”

“Everyone stand by,” DeLuca said, not sounding at all relieved. “Harlan, DeLuca,” he said, hailing the senior man.

“Send it.”

“The mercs travel in packs outside the city but they have a few sub-atmo patrol craft and I can’t guarantee they won't swing by if this place spooked the patrol.”

“Copy, all teams prepare to extract and fall back,” Mark ordered. Edwards wrapped her left hand around Sharpe’s right arm and walked her fast back inside to rush down the corridor and head for the stairs to get out of the building. Before she could start them off on descending the stairs, the New Liberty separatist spokeswoman burst from the meeting room and demanded to know where they were going.

“Security concern, ma’am,” Mac said as he blocked her path firmly.

“Wait, no wait! Okay, we agree. We agree to the terms!”

Sharpe pulled back on Edwards’ grip to twist and face the woman.

“We haven’t proposed any terms yet,” she said, sucking the air out of the building with the ensuing tension lasting only a second.

“We’ll provide the allied forces and the Combined States government with the resources they need and fulfill quotas, but in return you need to accept our independence and offer protection,” the woman blurted out, as if the security scare had threatened to kill the negotiations and make their decisions for them.

Sharpe hesitated a moment before inclining her head to one side.

“I think we can work with that, but we’ll need to meet again to figure out some fine print before we can fully commit to it,” she said, slipping free of Edwards to move in front of the woman and offer a hand.

She looked at it, pausing a second as if consigning herself to the sale of her soul, and shook it firmly.

“Great, now can we get the fuck out of here?” DeLuca called up from the bottom of the stairs.

The ride back to the adopted Odin compound was fast and furious, and all the while there were multiple eyes on the sky in case the private military contractors or security forces were spooked and had deployed some air assets.

Once back, Sharpe and her people were bundled inside the building while DeLuca deployed his extended team.

“Can I get your guys on watch?” he asked Mark. In response, Mark turned and pointed to Mac and Anders who moved to take up positions covering the weaker aspects of their perimeter.

“Got anything heavy?” Mark asked him quietly, earning a shake of DeLuca’s head.

“We got one Mk26 but that’s it. No space to smuggle in anything else—too many alarm bells. Not long after we showed up, they locked everything down tight, so we had no chance to get anything like that shipped to us.”

“And we didn’t know to bring anything like that,” Mark complained in tight-lipped annoyance.

DeLuca waved a hand as if it didn’t matter what they did or didn’t have because neither of them could change the situation.

“We’ve got armaments on the shuttle, that’s an option,” Mark offered but DeLuca waved off that suggestion.

“No room to park that bitch inside the perimeter, plus it’ll just attract attention. The real question is how we get word out,” he told Mark.

“What does that mean?”

“It means we’ve got no off-rock comms and our IOA contact is the only guy who can send anything up. This place is sealed up tighter than a duck’s butt, has been since before we got here,” DeLuca explained.

“We’ve got a tight beam array on our shuttle.”

“What good will that do? You wanna send a ’sup to the NRC in deep orbit?”

Mark smiled, turning his wrist to face him so he could check the time.

“We’ll have a friend up there in about… two hours,” he said. DeLuca frowned in thought for a few seconds before speaking.

“Get the shuttle back here, send the tight beam, get reinforcements, make a move on the capital building as soon as we have backup. Sound like a plan?”

“There’s a lot of working parts, but I think we can make that work. What’s your intel on this Carrera guy?”

“Jacket reads like he’s a hardass, but he’s just another politician. Walks around with a damn Christmas tree on his chest like he’s the best general in history. If we make a move on him directly or show an overwhelming force, he’ll fold like fresh towels.”

“Good. Mac?” he looked up to the makeshift fire step over the perimeter wall when he called for his own man.

“Whaddya need?” Mac called back.

“Grab Edwards and borrow a bike. Get back to the shuttle and bring it closer to the compound. I’ll cover the principal,” Mark said, turning back to DeLuca for his nod of approval. It would leave them two bodies short but having the shuttle there might add some key munitions if it got hairy before help arrived.

Mac dropped down as he called Edwards over the team channel. Inside of a minute they were powering out through the gate with just the whine of the bike’s motor fading away into the distance.

Mark listened to them leaving, aware that there weren’t any insect noises in the dark. There weren’t any noises at all, which he found unsettling.

* * *

Mac pushed the bike hard, weaving through the dips and bumps of the dirt road by night vision which forced his speed down as the distance through the optics was poor. He rode as fast as he could without putting them at risk, especially considering he was transporting their only pilot. But he knew spending too much time beyond the protection of the compound was a danger all on its own.

When he braked so hard that he was forced to sit up and prevent the bike’s rear wheel from lifting, Edwards’ helmet bumped into the back of his own and he heard her hissed curse in his earpiece.

“What the hell?”

“Shut up. Mark, it’s Mac, copy?”

Silence came back over the channel, which tore another curse from his lips this time.

“Anyone at the compound, do you copy, over?”

Still nothing came back to him.

“Mac, what’s going on?” Edwards asked in a whisper, sensing something drastic was up because he never got upset like that.

“There’s four guys checking out our ride. I can’t see a vehicle but it might be the mercs or security forces,” he whispered back to her, still with his gaze glued dead ahead.

He kicked down the bike’s stand and almost toppled her off the seat with the movement, but she didn’t complain. He pulled his rifle around in front of him and pulled out a cylinder with flat sides before screwing it onto the end of the barrel.

“You stay here, you stay down, and if I tell you to go, you get on this fuckin’ bike and you ride like shit back to the compound. Got it?” he said in a low growl. She understood. She knew his delivery wasn’t aimed at her for doing anything wrong; she recognized when the man was psyching himself up for action.

“Four guys,” she repeated, adding nothing more because he knew exactly what she meant.

“Four mercs or mall cops,” he answered, trying to reassure her by diminishing the potential capabilities of the enemy, despite his every intention of entering the ground ahead with the assumption that they all at least matched his skill set.

“I can help,” she insisted, but Mac grabbed her by the vest and pulled her close.

“Who else can fly the shuttle?” he demanded. When she gave no answer, he knew his point was made.

Edwards was precious cargo as much as their damn emissary was.

She didn’t tell him to be careful, just took cover and drew her weapon to do what she was told as he slipped into the black night.

* * *

“No transponder records,” one of them said, his eyes cast down to a screen display showing a darkened readout.

“Whoever flew this here didn’t come through customs,” another said, apparently stating the obvious from the noises the others made.

“Duh, and they parked it all the way out here because they didn’t want us to find it? Is that your next pearl of wisdom, Chang?”

“Fuck you, Naderi, okay? Just…”

“Just what? Come on, we’re all fuckin’ dying to hear it,” the one called Naderi said.

“Chang?” another asked, fear edging his voice as a scuffle of boots on dirt tickled the very fringes of his hearing.

Dando couldn’t respond on account of Mac’s left hand clamped so hard over his nose and mouth that his body went into spasm as he tried to suck in air. It was like what he imagined the void to be like without a suit. A crushing weight pressed on his chest and the total inability to breathe no matter what he did terrified him into freezing.

He didn’t have to worry for long, because a cold bite of pain erupted under his chin, turning red hot in an instant before a crunch filled his senses and his brain switched off.

“Chang, quit fucking around, you moron. Where the hell are you?”

“Fuck this,” another voice snapped before a flashlight burst into life and cut a bright, white beam in the direction the man had been in when he went silent.

Mac left Chang’s body ten paces away from the spot where he’d snatched him and circled fast around the back of the shuttle to come up on the flashlight holder from behind. He scanned the green glow of the dark, looking for the fourth body he’d seen earlier, not wanting to take any action unless he knew where all of his enemies were, but the flashlight played over the other one visible and his words accelerated the timeline.

“Goddammit, Naderi, you tryin’ to fuckin’ blind me, asshole?” he shielded his eyes and turned away, missing the double cough and slump of Naderi’s body collapsing.

Mac had seen the outline of the last man’s head inside the small transport and took a gamble on the glass not being armored before sending a round right through the rear window. The guy’s head jerked and slumped, and the front screen was splattered with fluid that looked black in the weak spray of light coming from the dropped flashlight.

“What?” was all the last man managed to say, still shielding his eyes and blinking away the spot in his vision, before two tungsten rounds punctured his face and blew his brains out of the ragged holes in the back of his skull.

Mac moved fast and low to the transport and ripped open the door to see the driver had been killed outright by his shot which had drilled a ragged role through the back of the neck and out of his… no, her mouth.

Mac swallowed once to accept the reality, because as much as he was a professional who would get the job done no matter what, he still didn’t enjoy killing women.

“Edwards, Mac,” he transmitted after confirming the four kills and checking the area again for sign of any others. The truck had four seats, but he knew not to assume anything.

“You okay?”

“I’m good. Get your ass down here nice and slow.”

She pulled up, dropping the bike on its side and drawing her weapon to find Mac hauling a body over the tailgate. She saw another body near his feet beside a pile of liberated weapons and gear.

She collapsed the stock of her Mod 1 and holstered it before picking up a rifle. It was as familiar in appearance as it was unfamiliar to hold. Mac saw her confusion and answered the unasked question.

“It’s the Chinese variant. Pretty similar to the Russian design.”

Edwards held it out away from her, marveling at the weight of it compared to their own weapons, before putting it back down.

“What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to fly back, take those weapons and this with you,” he said, handing over a small black item with buttons and a blank display. She took it, but he didn’t let go.

“Do not turn that motherfucker on, you hear me?”

“Locator?” she asked, understanding why he said it.

“Stands to reason. If nobody there can isolate GPS or whatever, then leave it off. Might help to know what they’re saying if things get ugly. Oh, you’ll need this with it,” he said, handing her something else.

She almost dropped the cleanly severed thumb when it dropped into her palm. She could still smell the hint of burned flesh from the plasma blade he must have used to cut it off, but she understood and tucked both into a pouch.

“What are you going to do?” she asked after he’d hauled up the final body and stooped to retrieve the bike. He lifted that into the truck and laid it over his four dead enemies before answering her.

“Driving these bastards out to hide them. Tell Mark what I’m doing and that I’ll be back as soon as I can be.”

* * *

Edwards landed the shuttle as close to the compound as possible, and walked down the rear ramp with her hands up in a placating gesture ready for when Mark started firing questions at her.

“It’s fine, he’s fine! There was a merc patrol at the shuttle when we got there; he’s taken them and their truck out to dump them somewhere,” she explained.

“Was there a contact? Was it reported?” Mark asked.

“No chatter on their radio channel after he took them down, so we don’t think so. They’ll just be a missing squad,” she told him, feeling far less confident than she sounded. Adding the word “just” into the report didn’t feel right either.

“He said to give you this but not to turn it on,” she said, handing over the radio and the severed thumb along with it.

“Anders, you know how to disable GPS on these things?” Mark asked, waiting for him to jog up and look at the radio.

“Nope. Hardwired into the power supply. We turn that on, they’ll know where it is inside thirty seconds,” Anders answered with evident disappointment.

“We better hope we don’t need to turn it on then,” Mark said as he walked back up the ramp and into the cockpit.

Flipping switches and punching numbers into the touchscreen, he pulled on a headset and spoke.

“Silence, Silence, Oscar Nine-Five actual, how copy?”

Chapter 20

Deep Orbit of New Liberty Terminal

CSS Silence

Onboard the CSS Silence, activity erupted on receipt of the transmission from the surface.

The usually calm interior only saw this level of urgency during combat, but nerves were frayed given how much was riding on ownership of the system they lurked in, waiting for the call.

“Nine-Five, Silence receiving you,” Jenner snapped into the comm. He was running the CIC when the call came in, and as much as he disliked the operators who had allowed him to humiliate himself when they first boarded, he was in no mind to allow that to affect his attitude.

Mark sent a brief update, giving their location and stating the fact that the majority of the representatives of the New Liberty Terminal government were formally requesting military assistance from the allied forces to secure the system.

“Does that mean to say they’ve seen the light and wish to embrace the Combined States once again?” Jenner asked.

“Negative, NLT is retaining their independent status and requesting assistance from an ally, over,” Mark’s voice came back without a trace of emotion. Jenner’s hand gripped the edge of the fixed counter he was leaning against and turned the flesh of his fingers white with an angry squeeze.

“Update?” Stahl asked as he walked into the CIC. Some stiffened as their captain entered but most were busy with their eyes glued to sensor readouts.

“Sir, Odin team just checked in from the surface. Short version is that the government is requesting our assistance,” Jenner explained.

“And the long version?” Stahl asked flatly.

“Long version is that the majority of the government requesting help isn’t in full control, and hostile elements have brought in PMCs to bolster a recently inflated security force. Effectively we’re supporting a coup.”

“Assume all that good stuff gets sorted out in the long run,” Stahl said absently as he turned to point at the rating strapped into a chair in front of the comm station. “Prepare a report. Requesting a full deployment of reinforcements to secure and maintain control of this system. Reiterate the number, type and armaments of the ships in the AO, and remind HQ of the two, belay that, three blockading forces we’re aware of. I’ll see it before you send it.”

“Silence, Nine-Five, you still there?” Mark’s voice said from a small speaker built into the display. Stahl held his hand out for the transmitter and paused before clicking his thumb down and waiting a beat.

“Nine-Five actual, Silence actual. Be advised reinforcements are requested on the hurry-up. Any further assistance you require from us, over?”

“Negative, Silence actual, just be ready to watch our backs. Out.”

Stahl returned the handset to the operator and stepped back from the workspace. He glanced briefly at Jenner so his XO knew who he was talking to and reeled off a series of orders.

“Ready stations around the clock on full silent running protocols. Keep eyes on their location at all times and inform me if we lose visual for any reason. I want a full target analysis and threat assessment for every ship in this system, with updated target packages running constantly; I want to know who their biggest hitter is and how best to take them down the second this goes hot if the need arises, understood?”

“Understood,” Jenner answered as Stahl pressed a button on a comm device mounted on the wall.

“Bridge, this is the captain,” he said, releasing his finger from the talk button.

“Gilroy here, sir.”

“Lieutenant, maintain geo-stationary orbit over the target site at all times unless we’re likely to risk discovery or a collision.”

“Aye, aye,” came back in clipped tones as the female lieutenant acknowledged the order, and the rating Stahl had tasked with composing the message spun his chair to face the captain.

He leaned in, reading the message on screen before straightening and slapping a hand on the back of the seat.

“That’s good, encrypt it and send it priority. XO, what’s the ETA for the rest of the flotilla?”

“Seven hours and change, sir.”

“Right. I’ll be on the bridge. Send me the target packets as soon as they’re compiled. Let’s see if we can’t plough the road as soon as they get here,” Stahl said with a dark anticipation.

“Sir, orders if the enemy blockade ships arrive in system?” Jenner asked.

“Fastball a target analysis on those bastards and send it to me.”

* * *

Major Komarov stood abruptly as the Chinese private military officer was still talking, and walked for the door.

“I have not finished, solider. Sit down,” the officer said arrogantly, with all the confidence of a man who believed himself to be in charge just because someone had pinned a phony rank badge to his black uniform.

Komarov stopped, turning slowly like a rolling boulder, and looked the man up and down. The expression on his face said that he wasn’t the slightest bit impressed with what he saw, and if that look wasn’t enough to make it plain, he spat on the floor in front of him and turned back for the door.

“You will be charged with insubordination! Sit down, or I will—”

“You will what?” Komarov asked almost conversationally. “What will you do, tiny man? Will you tell your pretend soldiers to arrest me?”

The officer swallowed visibly, his miniature Adam’s apple bobbing dramatically in his smooth, hairless neck.

Komarov leaned closer and arched one eyebrow comically before he spoke again, making the man lean back from either his breath or his aura of malevolence.

“I… I will dock you one… one half day’s pay if you do not sit down,” he stammered, trying to earn compliance through the only means he believed mercenaries cared about.

Komarov stood straight and looked mildly shocked before shaking his head and laughing gently. It was a low, rumbling laugh like distant thunder that vibrated the floor under the officer’s boots.

Muttering something guttural in Russian, Komarov walked out of the room with Federova following casually behind.

“Does this mean they will not pay us, Comrade?” he asked the major in Russian as they walked down the corridor.

“We are warriors of the mighty Confederacy, Daniil. What need do we have for money when the motherland provides all that we need?” he asked seriously. He was so serious that Federova almost fell for the party propaganda, but when he understood the satire he laughed along with the bigger man.

“Tell me, Daniil. What do you make of that report?”

“Of four missing security guards sent to investigate a shuttle sighting?” Federova asked, unsure which part of the briefing he was referring to precisely.

“Yes, that report.”

Federova shrugged and gave his best guess.

“It could be many things, but given our intelligence reports I think the Americans have sent someone here to negotiate behind our backs.”

“Not just ours, Daniil, but the duly appointed leadership of the New Liberty… whatever in the fuck this place wants to call itself. Come on, it’s time we made contact,” Komarov said, breezing through the makeshift mercenary headquarters and offering a salute of crisp, unadulterated sarcasm so authentic that the man guarding the entrance straightened up and returned it.

Komarov was happy that he had been permitted to go on the mission; however, he was unhappy that his infiltration was covert and that he had only one man with him.

He would have much preferred to land with a shuttle packed with his fellow spetsial operatsii and to have simply wandered into town like any other visitor. Enough money placed in the hands of a customs inspector usually allowed intimidating men to do as they pleased, but he guessed such a tactic here would meet more resistance given the highly tensed assholes of the security forces and their financially motivated backup.

He would have sent word ahead through the proper channels, had he been permitted to “roll deep” as his people called it, in a way that was somewhere near the admiration end of the mockery scale. They often mimicked the speech of popular American culture as a form of denigrating their enemy, of dehumanizing them, but many were jealous of the apparent freedom offered to people outside of their glorious nation.

Word sent ahead in this fashion would have elicited an official invitation to visit the capital, and that invitation would include the instruction that their guests had no need to undergo the usual security processes.

Komarov knew those orders would come from the corrupt man forced to share power with those he felt beneath his heroic status, and that was fine by him. He could smile in awe and be caught staring at an impressive array of medals when he needed to, even though such things did not register at all on his personal scale of importance.

The only thing he trusted less than greedy men asking for help from a bigger bully than themselves was the men and women who operated in plain sight but beneath the normal waves of society.

Komarov disliked anything covert on a cellular level, unlike his younger brother who found a thrill in the lies. He preferred to let an enemy know exactly who he was before he killed them.

They weaved through the streets of the busy city and more than once Komarov scoffed openly at civilians carrying weapons as if the law of their little colony was expected to break down at a moment’s notice.

If it did, people like that would be among the first to die, as desperate men and women would club them to death with their bare hands to take those weapons from them. Being armed didn’t make a person powerful, but it did make them more noticeable.

Navigating them to a set meeting spot by memory alone, he stood before a young couple sitting on a bench and cleared his throat. The boy, for he couldn’t be more than twenty years old, looked up at the soldier and tried to swallow down his fear.

The girl giggled, tearing his attention back to her as the two of them tittered and rubbed the tips of their noses together.

“Hey, little boy,” Komarov rumbled. “Stop putting fingers inside sister and move.”

“Fuck you, you fucking… fucking… vagrant,” the girl sneered. Komarov eyed the boy for a while longer and let the hint of a smile creep up one side of his ghastly face before rotating it slowly in that way he did to lock her in place.

“If I want to hear you talk, I will shove my hand up your shit pipe far enough to make your little mouth move with my fingers,” he said, turning back to the boy without lingering to see the response to his words.

“This? This my seat. Go away,” he said, igniting the girl into a sudden rage.

“Who the fuck do you think you are? My dad is an officer in the security forces. He’ll fucking kick your ass off this planet so fast you—aaah! What the hell?”

As she spoke, Komarov casually spat on the bunched fingers of his right hand and reached out with his left for her coat and started lifting it up.

She flew from the bench, dragging her boyfriend up with her before catapulting him at Komarov with a shriek demanding he, “get them!”

Komarov stood stock still to receive the boy propelled at him without hope of avoiding the collision. He let him slam into his chest armor and reached down with the wet fingers of his right hand to grasp and squeeze in a violently unpleasant way.

The boy made noises like a seagull experiencing orgasm before he was released to crumple to the floor. Komarov waved his fingers daintily as they fled, ignoring the curses and promises of retribution she spat at him.

With a satisfied groan, Komarov arranged himself and sat on the bench before leaning back appearing proud of his achievement.

Federova was aware of the need for the bench to be that one specifically, even though the information hadn’t been shared with him. He knew a predetermined dead-drop when he saw it, and he knew that his comrade was not a man to wait for the moment when the set was free.

Komarov leaned over as if stretching his back, but the subtle movement of one hand scooping underneath the bench was visible to the man beside him. Komarov slipped something into a tube secured beneath the bench, and sat up straight again just as trouble appeared heading right for them.

“Well, well, well, if it ain’t Ivan and Ivan,” a cocky voice announced loudly. Komarov turned his head slightly to watch Morris, resplendent in every piece of tactical gear he could purchase, approaching with his arms out to both sides like he was greeting old friends.

Unlike Morris and the two Americans flanking him, and the six Chinese mercenaries following on behind, Komarov and Federova carried only pistols and knives on them.

“I think a little explanation is in order, wouldn’t ya say?” Morris added when he’d walked closer. Everything about his demeanor said he was enjoying the show, was enjoying everyone looking at him perform, and Komarov fought down the urge to rise fast and crush his windpipe so they could watch him choke to death instead.

“Explanation? Sure, Yankee fucking Doodle. You see, when a brother and sister love each other very much, they end up having a piece of gristle like you come along,” he said, seeing how far he could taunt the man into making his murder a justifiable act of self-defense.

Not that he needed an excuse to kill him, it was just more enjoyable when they tried to do it first. It made the dying look of shock on their faces that much sweeter.

Morris’ smile dropped and he pointed a finger at Komarov.

“On your feet, Ivan, you’re being detained for assault.”

“On what authority?” Federova asked politely, earning a whip of Morris’ head in his direction with the pointing finger following just behind.

“If I wanna hear you bark I’ll kick your damn cage,” he snarled, close to losing control before the confrontation proper had even begun. Federova smiled and leaned back on the bench, happy to be insulted by a worthless man because he suffered no loss of self-confidence from it. Morris turned his attention back to Komarov and snapped at him again to stand up.

“Tell me, Mister Special Operations, where did you serve?”

“That’s classified,” Morris answered in a low growl, no longer acting up for the crowd to hear him and giving the stock answer he always used to divert attention from his confidential career details. “But I can tell you I’ve killed enough of your people to know what your insides all look like.”

Komarov felt Federova stiffen beside him, but he waited for a cue of permission from the major before he took any action. Komarov was still as a corpse, just staring at the man.

“And where did you do this? Were you on Koven? New Tuscany? Perhaps you fought my brothers and sisters in Delta Eridani? I killed more of your kind there than radiation sickness…”

“You fuckin’ piece of shit,” Morris hissed, stepping forward and reaching for the axe looped on his right hip but Komarov was there fast, left hand clamping the weapon onto his belt and right hand gripping the man’s throat before blocking out the light as he reared over him. Komarov switched off the power to his consciousness by the violent application of forehead to nose, letting the man go like discarded meat.

Morris slumped on the ground and groaned involuntarily as blood bubbled from his mouth. Weapon barrels came up to point at the Russian, who had shocked them by moving so fast for such a big man. Komarov seemed amused and turned to face Federova.

“It looks like we are being arrested,” he said happily.

* * *

Thirty minutes later they were stripped to just pants and shirts, with all of their gear and armor sitting in neat piles on a desk the other side of the bars they were imprisoned behind.

Komarov, like any long-suffering member of any military in the galaxy, sighed with satisfaction and laid out flat on the bench, which was only wide enough to serve as a metal tightrope for his huge shoulders.

Federova, having had the same idea, opted for a position on the floor with his feet raised on the bench.

Both men were close to sleep when the mechanical buzzer indicated the doors to their cell were being unlocked. Two uniformed members of the planet’s own security force entered ahead of a man wearing a dress uniform of a design neither Russian had seen before.

Their clothes and vests were returned to them, but their weapons remained outside the cell.

“Get dressed,” the man with the ribbons on his chest instructed.

“Where are you taking us?” Komarov asked in a tone that indicated their compliance was yet to be determined.

The man, already turning for the door, stopped and looked back over his shoulder.

“The head of the security forces would like to talk with you,” he said. Something about his manner, restrained and nearing respectful, apologetic even, told Komarov that he was making progress.

Chapter 21

Barton

Deep Space, Designated Void Training Area

After we completed the third successful void jump, the last time traveling thirty clicks of which frankly made me want to die of boredom after the first ten minutes marveling at how small I was and how big space was, we stood down ready to go home.

I mean, Hades wasn’t home, but you spend long enough in any service and you start to think of weird places as home.

We got time to relax, and because there weren’t any sleep pods onboard, we did what all experienced military personnel did.

We found food, then we found somewhere to sleep.

It was weird, and I didn’t know what Landry had told the other three, but we ate together and talked like we were already a team. It was an easy atmosphere, unlike my old marine platoon where there were two guys I didn’t much care for and a staff sergeant with a massive boner for causing misery.

I chided myself a little for thinking that. Every single one of those guys was dead now, Hateful Havelock included, and it didn’t serve anyone to stir up shit like that, even if it was just inside my own head.

I stayed pensive as my thoughts wandered to us operating as a team. I honestly had my doubts about four people fresh out of selection and training operating as a unit, but I guessed Landry had already forgotten more about special operations than I was likely to learn anytime soon.

If he said we could do it, I trusted him. Only I couldn’t get rid of the nagging doubt that we’d be better off being spread around other teams to learn from their experience and to hell with instant unit cohesion or whatever they were calling it.

“What you thinking, Barton?” Valdez asked in his rumbling voice in between shoving overloaded forkfuls of pasta into his mouth and chewing like he was late for something.

“Ah, nothing man, just…”

“He’s thinking about how much he sucks at close protection,” Fournier answered for me. I made out like I’d just remembered something and dropped my fork to reach inside my pocket before pulling out my hand with the middle finger raised.

I was glad for the lame trash talk because it took my head right out of where it had been and back to the moment.

“You think we’ll get our axes when we get back?” Fournier asked. I had to stifle a laugh that would’ve sounded unkind and shook my head as I chewed. He was a big beast of a man with a wild stare and the start of what promised to be a crazy mountain-man beard. A few times we’d called him Lumberjack and he lacked the good sense to pretend he liked it, meaning it was fast becoming his callsign because it clearly pissed him off even if he wouldn’t say a word about it. Man, Canadians are just too polite sometimes.

For all his manly man-ness, he was meticulous and liked to have everything all neat and tidy. I knew his eagerness to get his hands on his axe was probably so he could clean it.

“Need to learn how to use them first, Lumberjack. You can’t just go around chopping down trees with it,” Valdez said, smiling at his own obvious hilarity before anyone else did.

“Or slice your damn hally-peen-yos for all that Mexican food,” Fournier grumbled back, not looking up as he threw the slur.

“Yeah, we ate a lot of Mexican food in Colombia,” Valdez answered in a tone that just rejected the attempt to push his buttons.

“Got all the foreign powers weapons to acquaint ourselves with too,” West said, bringing us back on track and making it sound like it would be difficult for people who’d been around firearms most of our lives.

I mean, if we had to use them in a pinch, then muscle memory would fuck us up by reaching for fire selectors on the wrong sides and stuff like that, but it wasn’t like they took a master’s in engineering to figure out.

Just as I was rearranging my thoughts to voice that opinion in a way that wouldn’t pick a fight with West, the deck shook under our feet a little, making us all stop eating. Except Valdez who still chewed like he was worried someone was going to take it away from him. I had zero idea how that guy was still small when he ate everything he saw.

I was wondering if he had worms or something when the deck shook again with a lot more force and the lighting flickered out to be replaced by the angry glow of red emergency bulbs.

Right after that, before any of us could speak, a klaxon started up.

We scrambled, dropping the idea of food like it wasn’t important anymore—all except Valdez who shoved a final mouthful in before he stood—and made for the door.

Any of us who’d spent time afloat was accustomed to this. We were all assigned damage control team roles when we boarded, and I was pretty used to getting roused from bed at zero-stupid-fifteen for a drill, but something told me this wasn’t one.

Then I thought about where we were and what we were doing and didn’t put the idea of a drill to test us far from my mind.

That all changed when the hull starting ringing like a gong and the emergency lighting flickered like the whole ship was suffering power issues.

“Guys, this ain’t right,” I said to the others, speaking loudly over the sound of the insistent klaxon.

“No shit, I hadn’t even lined up those pudding cups like tequila shots yet,” Valdez complained.

“No, he’s right. I don’t think this is a test,” West answered, turning to show the wide-eyed look of either anticipation or fear in her eyes.

* * *

Command Sergeant Major Landry was reviewing footage of the training assault when the first impact on the hull set his senses alight. He dropped the tablet and tore open his locker to throw a heavy vest on, tightening the straps on the right side as he hadn’t loosened the left when he took it off to save time.

The vest was loaded, just as the short-barreled rifle he snatched up was stacked with magazines, and he crammed a tactical helmet over his head to flip down the visor and activate the vision enhancement modes.

By the time the next impacts came and the lights in his cabin turned from soft white to dull red, he was already reaching for the door and attaching the collapsed rifle stock to the sling of his vest.

Either it was a drill he hadn’t been made aware of—in which case he’d put his foot so far up that person’s ass he’d hope they had a twin so he got matching idiot slippers—or they were deep in the shit.

Turning left for the bridge, he encountered a navy rating and demanded to know what was happening.

“NRC patrol ship coming up on us,” he answered in a rush before running off to his assigned station.

More impacts rippled along the ship, but no explosions followed. No violent decompression sucked the air from the gangway he was striding down so purposefully, which meant one of two things. Either the enemy were sending a warning, or they were firing wet turds at them. The latter was unlikely, and the former worried him.

“All hands, battle stations,” the announcement came over the speakers built into the bulkheads all over the ship. He fought down the urge to comment on timing and carried on for his objective.

Bursting through the door to the bridge and making the marine stationed there jump at the sudden sight of him, he demanded again to know what was going on.

“Single patrol vessel. Smaller than us but faster and better armed,” a naval officer told him. He had no authority on that bridge, but the skeleton crew assigned to them for that phase of training knew who they were transporting.

“Any others in the AO?” Landry barked, earning a distracted shake of the officer’s head as she turned back to her workspace.

They were in an old, captured NRC ship but their ident codes read as Combined States military. So many possibilities raced through his head, but he hoped for an outcome he could affect.

“Did they send any comms first?” he asked, having to repeat himself more loudly because nobody answered him.

“Yeah, they demanded we cut thrust and prepare for boarding. Said they were taking their property back and gave us the opportunity to abandon ship,” the marine behind him answered. Landry turned on him.

“How many of your guys onboard?”

“Only twelve.”

Landry thought on that. He had the twelve marines and only two of his staff along with the four Odin candidates, as the others had all gone back in the other ship a day before. The cogs in his brain spun fast before he turned back and called out loudly for the attention of the ship’s captain.

The man turned, annoyed at being interrupted on his own bridge.

“Whatever it is, make it fast,” he snapped.

“Sir, your plan?”

“My plan?”

“Yes sir. How do you intend to either destroy or escape the enemy?” Landry asked, as if either option was as simple as merely choosing one.

“I have very limited munitions to fight back and I can’t outrun them. If I unload what we do have, they’ll skip off to whatever battle group they’re attached to and bring back reinforcements we definitely cannot handle. My plan is to get to the nearest jump lane and put distance between us and whatever else is out there.”

“Can we make it?” Landry asked. The captain, a naval commander he knew, didn’t respond immediately, which told him enough.

“Do as they say. Cut thrust and let them board us,” Landry said. The captain wheeled on him, wearing a look of abject horror only to see that wizened old soldier standing still and resolute in spite of the shuddering impacts the ship was still suffering.

“Direct hit to port rear engine two!” a shout rang out. As if their ship wanted to underline the point, it gave a long, creaking shudder.

“What are you suggesting?” the captain asked.

“I need five minutes, preferably ten. Can you do that?” Landry asked after the captain of the training ship had listened to his plan without interrupting. He thought about it before nodding once, which sent Landry running from the bridge.

* * *

“Cut thrust,” the captain of the training ship ordered. His instructions were followed but there was an obvious air of judgement from his bridge crew. “Open a channel to them.”

He got the nod from his comm tech and cleared his throat.

“Attention NRC vessel, this is Captain Sonora of the CSS Olympia. We have cut thrust as instructed.”

“Prepare for boarding. Instruct crew to lay down weapons.”

The comm cut out as soon as the barked order was delivered, leaving the crew on the bridge suspended in a moment of apprehensive tension.

“Bridge to Odin, over to you,” the captain said with his finger pressed down onto the intercom.

* * *

“All Odin elements, report to shuttle bay with full armaments available,” the order came over the ship’s intercom. It wasn’t repeated, which left four people on standby to fight fires, exchanging glances as if to question if they were included in that.

“How many DIs are aboard?” West asked as she scanned the three faces looking back at her.

“Not enough,” Barton answered, stripping off the fireproof gear he’d only just fought his way into. The others followed suit and ditched their damage control outfits to run to the aft section. Landry was there, geared up like a covert op had gone loud, and his face showed no signs of annoyance when they rounded the corner and came into sight.

“Good, I need two of you to suit up for the void and get into the shuttle airlock. Barton and West.”

Both candidates nodded and turned to retrieve their gear as rifles were handed out to the remaining two. Four marines were with them, leaving only Landry and his two candidates to fight alongside them.

“My guys have a fire team each at the other locations they might try boarding us,” Landry explained. “West, Barton, I need you two through the airlock and hidden inside the bay before they send a shuttle—if they send a shuttle—and when they send a boarding team through, I need you to deal with the pilots and anyone left onboard. Got it?”

They got it.

“Everyone else with me on this side of the airlock doors. If we can’t fight them back, we decompress the shuttle bay and blast the fuckers out into the void, yes?”

Marines and candidates nodded, adding their own unique brand of acknowledgement which favored the word “KILL” from the marines. That made Barton smile, made him feel like he was at home in the emotional sense of the word right then.

Landry personally checked their void suits and tightened the straps holding suppressed Mod 1s to their right thighs. He added two spare magazines to the carry rig on the left before sheathing their plasma blades alongside the reloads.

“If we have to blow the seals, you make damn sure you’re not between anything and that open blast door, got it?” he said in a low voice, switching his gaze between the two as he spoke. Both nodded, knowing the dangers of being hammered out into space by eighty tons of enemy shuttlecraft. As if sensing they were being spoken about, another announcement came over the ship’s intercom.

“Zhuk-class shuttle inbound, Zhuk-class shuttle inbound.” Landry’s eyes flickered aside as if accessing a stored file in his brain before he turned and spoke to his assembled group of killers.

“You know what that means. A Zhuk can carry around twenty at a squeeze, which means we only have to kill three each. I don’t know about you, but I like those odds,” he said with a smile that bordered on unhinged.

It didn’t matter. With the adrenaline of pre-combat coursing through them and the bloodthirsty words from the man who could convince an ice sculpture to fall in and follow him to hell, the tension broke.

Armor plates were slapped with gloved hands hard enough to feel the sting beneath them. Boots were stamped onto the deck and growls filled the air as men and women ramped themselves up ready to fight. Ready to kill.

“You two, go,” Landry said, sending Barton and West into the airlock. He cycled the controls himself and tapped at his earpiece.

“Comm check,” he said. Both gave him the universal sign for “okay” and sounded off in turn.

“Remember,” Landry said. “Get out of sight and hold on, then when you need to, you fuckin’ kill. Got it?”

* * *

Barton

It dawned on me what I—what we—were about to do about a minute after we walked into the shuttle bay. West went left to hide behind the little craft we’d previously used for void jumps, which was secured to the deck by magnetic locks. I decided to wedge myself behind one of the main compression pumps, which seemed like a good idea at the time, right up until the thing started vibrating so hard I think my damn ancestors felt it. It shook me so hard I reckoned I was probably sterile by the time it stopped.

The noise it made was so damn loud at first before the odd sensation of feeling the noise instead of hearing it washed over me. My brain tried to carry on generating the sound in my imagination, but just the feeling of it totally overwhelmed me to the point that when it stopped, my body kept shaking.

The respite didn’t last long, because the lights faded out from the NRC shuttle squeezing in before the outer doors started to slide closed again, which meant I rode the return wave of compression until I felt as if all my teeth were loose.

When that stopped and sound returned, the sensations were purged by another dump of adrenaline into my system.

I heard shouts, orders in another language, and the accent that carried them sent a stab into my chest. It took me back to Komarov, that damn animal who probably ate babies for breakfast, and I felt more than a little fear.

Fear was good. Well, fear was okay, at least. Fear was focus, and focus was good. Whatever.

I listened to the tramp of boots accompanying the shouts, and waited. I waited for what felt like minutes when in reality it was seconds, before West whispered over the channel.

“Barton, move!”

I slipped out, keeping low and moving fast, and made straight for the open side door of the NRC shuttle. West was off to my right, heading for the open ramp at a run. I jumped up, almost hitting my head on the top of the open door, in time to see West fall on the guy near the top of the ramp and bury the fat can on the end of her weapon’s barrel to the side of his head.

A reverberating tanggg filled the air muffled by my suit, but I had no time to dwell on that because one of the pilots was already up and pointing a sidearm toward her.

I took a bead on him with my own weapon, firing two four-round bursts center mass to make him stagger and lose the ability to stand upright. I knew he wasn’t dead from the way the rounds had impacted, knew they’d hit armor, so I took a second to be sure of my next burst and shattered the visor of his helmeted face to splatter blood on the inside.

He fell, lifeless, but the other pilot—slimmer profile and narrower shoulders—was right behind him and raising a weapon, having figured shit out about a second too late.

West fired right after me, both of us hitting the pilot with burst fire which made her shudder like she got electrocuted.

We swept the shuttle to clear it, going back out into the bay as the percussive rattle of gunfire reached us from the other side of the airlock where Landry and the others had opened up on them with everything they had as soon as the inner door popped and slid aside.

We waited, guns trained on the airlock, until the comm came alive.

“West, Barton, report!”

“Bay clear, three down,” West responded, sounding way cooler than I felt. “Boarders?”

“All Tangos down, one friendly injured. Disengage their shuttle’s docking locks and get back inside,” Landry answered. Gone was the aggressive, almost fatherly tone he used and in its place was a still calm that only came from successful combat.

I stacked up on the airlock and peeked my head around, seeing maybe ten bodies in a bloody heap on the other side of the observation glass. The doors closed and the airlock cycled for the doors our side to open. Picking my way inside and trying not to step on bodies was a pointless task, so I just stood atop two dead guys and waited. We could fix up the place afterward, but right then I thought Landry just wanted his people inside so we could put some distance between us and the enemy who were still out there.

I expected the hull to start vibrating again as the patrol ship realized it couldn’t contact the boarding party and resumed thumping us with munitions, but nothing happened.

We cycled back in, pulling off the helmets to our void suits as we sucked in the fresh, recycled air of the ship tinged with the stink of blood. Landry slapped our shoulders to help us through before pressing his face up to the glass and overriding the pressurization system to blow the outer doors.

I turned back, putting my head beside his as the ragdoll bodies of the shuttle crew were lifted through the air to spin and fly toward the opening doors with the escaping atmosphere. I was a little sickened by the impacts they made on the door edges, my brain imagining the crunch of shattering bones with the force of the hits, before the untethered shuttle slid on its skids toward the black void and tumbled out into nothing.

“Landry to bridge, punch it,” he said over the intercom. Immediately, the engines surged and the distance between us and the tumbling shuttle lengthened fast.

“Why?” I asked, not sure exactly which part I was talking about.

“Latest intel on NRC boarding tactics indicates they’re operating as a suicide squad. Shuttles are rigged to blow unless the boarding is successful. Part of their whole denying the enemy their resources shit.”

“Fuckin’ psychos,” I muttered.

“No argument here. Fuckers have got the numbers to waste,” Landry answered. “Good work,” he added with another slap on my shoulder.

“What do we do now?” I asked, watching out of the glass as the doors closed and expecting to see the burst of momentary flame and sparks as the shuttle detonated its power core.

Chapter 22

CSS Olympia

Deep Space, Approaching Jump Lane Access Point

Commander Sonora, captain of the Olympia and nearing the end of a career that had been so unremarkable he’d considered himself effectively retired years before, found himself in his first real combat scenario.

He’d been through hundreds of training simulations and had been in void contacts before, only he’d never been alone and controlling a poorly armed, slow, outdated NRC tub.

The fact that they were supposed to be so far behind their own lines that the prospect of meeting the enemy was technically zero didn’t matter. They were there, and he had to deal with it.

“Sir, patrol ship on direct approach vector,” a voice reported from his right. He said nothing, just stared at the display and watched the icon for the NRC ship blink closer to them.

“Sir?” the hesitant voice asked, checking if he’d heard them.

“Thank you, Lieutenant, maintain course and speed,” Sonora said, sounding far more controlled than he expected himself to be. Considering that, he even realized he was cool and controlled inside. His heart didn’t thump in his chest and his breathing wasn’t rapid or panicked.

“Sir, they’ll be in weapons range in ten seconds.”

“Prepare three missiles, low yield, set them to only accelerate at seventy percent maximum thrust,” Sonora ordered with a finger pointed at the weapons operator even though his eyes were still glued to the display.

Commands were punched into the glass display screen, a retrofit courtesy of the CS naval conversion program after the archaic switches and buttons of the original NRC terminal had been removed, and the ordnance was reported ready to fire. Sonora held a finger aloft, waiting for them to fire first as the red icon bore down on their blue one at the center of the display.

“Sir?” the same lieutenant asked again, concern evident in his words, as if daring to question if the captain was still in control.

“Wait,” he snapped, holding up his left hand pointed at the helmsman as he watched the display, ready to time his maneuver perfectly.

“Fire missiles!”

“Firing missiles! Missiles away!” the weapons operator barked loudly.

“Incoming ordnance!” came another shout.

“Increase engines to maximum, fifteen-second burn and cut thrust,” Sonora called, turning his raised left hand into a point at the helmsman. The engines surged, pushing above maximum recommended output and testing the heat syncs to their limit. Both they and the enemy knew they couldn’t maintain that kind of thrust for long before they had to power down to not lose their engines for good.

To the NRC vessel, it looked like the weak target had just fired everything it had and stomped on the gas in a desperate bid to get away. Sonora hoped they would fall for that. He hoped their commander was a simple man or woman who only saw a weak enemy ripe for a kill. He hoped they didn’t think like he did.

Silence hung over the bridge for the next ten seconds until a second fire report came to them.

Sonora gave minor corrections for them to adjust course and heading, but they all knew such tactics wouldn’t work for long. The NRC would fire more munitions with a wider spread if they jinked and jived too much, and each of those could be catastrophic if they struck the target.

“Sir! Long-range sensors show another NRC vessel converging on our trajectory!”

So there’s the rest of the bastards, hiding out in the dark until they found something weak to prey on, he thought acidly.

“Distance to jump lane?” Sonora asked.

“At current speed, ninety-eight seconds. Enemy will overtake us by then, sir…”

“At sixty seconds, reverse thrust and go into full reverse. Prepare everything we have, dial it all up to eleven, and stand by to hit the enemy as they pass us,” he said, tearing his eyes from the display to look at the weapons operator.

The young man needed no such reassurance or encouragement, and instead, his fingers danced over the control to prepare every weapon they carried to be fired at once.

“Broadside ready,” he announced when he’d finished, making Sonora smile at the use of ancient terminology. Back then, when ships sailed only on water and black powder cannons took turns in blasting holes in one another, a full broadside had to be fired in rippling waves so as to prevent the ship from shaking itself apart.

That was less of a consideration these days, but a larger ship firing everything at once could wreak havoc with internal systems and artificial gravity generators, maybe even shake some vital systems apart and risk their lives.

He had no such concerns, carrying barely a minimal complement of armaments, because they operated so far inside their own territory that the chance of encountering any NRC forces made the risk negligible.

That was why he was there, he reminded himself. His career was as negligible as the chance of him encountering the enemy, and a refusal to take a job behind a desk had left him with one of the lowest ranking postings in the entire Combined States Navy.

He watched the counter someone had helpfully added to the central display as their hull rang from three impacts. He half listened to the minor damage report, enough to know it didn’t affect his plan, and counted down the final few seconds before the sixty mark.

Fifty-six.

Fifty-seven.

Fifty-eight…

“Cut all forward thrust, full reverse!”

The ship rocked and groaned from the forces acting in opposition to each other. Arresting momentum in space took just as long as accelerating, and ships above a certain size simply weren’t designed to slam on the brakes like that.

“Wait for iiiit… Fire!” he yelled, watching with a savage glee as the weapons operator grandly dropped a straight index finger down on the panel to activate all the launch sequences he’d programmed.

In spite of the words he’d used, the Olympia did not fire a full broadside. Instead, the missiles and tungsten munitions fired in a rapid and apparently random sequence, sending thumping reports through the ship’s bulkheads like a carefully controlled explosion was toppling a high-rise apartment building.

Sonora imagined the NRC patrol ship screaming past them overhead, the pilot cursing and trying to correct his course as the missiles and fast-moving balls of solid metal punched into their underside.

“Give me a forward visual,” Sonora ordered, waiting a half second before the cameras mounted far ahead and above their position showed a sparking, tumbling mess of debris overtake them high above as it continued to break apart at the edges.

“Resume course, maximum burn. Get us to that jump lane,” the captain ordered, deigning to lower his eyes to the smiling weapons tech and offer a brief, appreciative nod.

“Sir, that other NRC vessel is breaking off pursuit course. We’re free and clear,” an officer watching the sensor readings called out.

“Jump lane in ten seconds,” came the report from the helm.

“Sir! Priority comm from fleet command. Our direction is blockaded by enemy forces. Fleet recommend we stay out here or take alternative route.”

With no time to weigh up the options in any great detail, Sonora gave orders for them to hit the jump lane and go in the only safe direction they could go.

But staying out there wasn’t an option.

He saw it as soon as the sensor readings flashed an anomaly on screen that distorted the readings of the jump lane access point.

He’d seen a thousand just like it before, only these readings painted a picture that was like looking at something through glass. It was similar to the way heat clouded the straight lines of an image, and he knew of only one thing that could cause such a disturbance in space.

It was the effect of stealth material coating a hull, and he knew nothing good could come from it.

“Abandon the jump lane access. All ahead stop, power down weapons systems.”

Faces turned to look at him, expressions instantly questioning his sanity, before the lieutenant looking at the terminal display in front of him cried out.

“Vessel ahead, must be stealth tech!”

As Sonora’s orders were reluctantly carried out by his nervous bridge crew, the captain sat in his chair and instructed the comm station to broadcast in the blind on an unencrypted channel.

“Attention stealth vessel blocking the jump lane. This is Captain Sonora of the CSS Olympia. We are a non-combat training deployment, requesting permission to pass your position.”

Long seconds ticked by before nerves started to fray and an officer asked Sonora if he wanted to repeat the message when an incoming transmission was received.

“Put it on speaker,” Sonora asked, showing no surprise at the British accent that filled his bridge.

“This is Captain Broughton of the HMS Lynx. I sympathize with you, Captain, but I am unable to permit your request. Ensure your weapons systems stay offline and prepare to be boarded. Your ship is now the property of His Majesty’s Royal Navy and your crew are prisoners of war.”

The comm link was cut from the other end leaving the skeleton crew of the training ship waiting for orders.

Sonora tapped at the communications panel beside him, opening a link to the special operations team who had just saved them for nothing.

Chapter 23

Barton

CSS Olympia

“Say again?” Landry asked, his jowls slackening in a way I didn’t like the look of at all. It was like he’d just seen a magic trick he couldn’t understand, or the way a dog looked at its owner when the ball wasn’t thrown.

Only it couldn’t have been anything he’d seen, it must’ve been what he’d heard via the comm link in his helmet.

I froze, watching his blank expression as he took in whatever information he needed clarification on.

“Understood. Buy me some time… Sir, I’m sorry, but that’s on you. Tell them you need to disarm anti-boarding explosives or something,” was all he said before closing his eyes and taking a long, slow breath in and out. Opening his eyes again, he spoke fast, calling everyone in to him.

“Listen up, people, situation has changed. As of thirty seconds ago this ship was blocked from entering the jump lane by a British stealth boat. It ain’t friendly, and we have two options.”

“Sit out the war in some NRC prison camp? No way, Top. Not happening,” one of the DIs said to Landry, deadly serious in his tone.

“Personally, I agree with that sentiment. Option two is we go over there and change the narrative,” Landry answered in a tone so casual that for a second it hadn’t sounded as if he was suggesting a few people cross the void directly in front of a jump lane entry point and hit a British stealth boat on a whim.

The term “fastball” didn’t even come close.

“I’ll go,” I said, fighting to hide my frown because I had no goddam idea I was even planning to say anything, let alone volunteer.

“Good man, that makes two of us,” Landry said.

“Three,” West piped up, looking at the two DIs who were wearing expressions that said they were going no matter what anyone said. Landry stood tall and began stripping off his tactical vest.

“Bilkins, I want you here. Keep Valdez and Fournier along with the marines to deal with whatever they send over here.”

“I can go. I’m—” Fournier said, also starting to strip off his gear, like he wanted to volunteer before Landry cut him off.

“Fournier, I damn near failed you twice because you flap around in the void like a kid that can’t swim. You’re staying onboard. Coburn, you and I will go with Barton and West. Gear up fast, because we need to be outside before they send a shuttle.”

Coburn, tall and lean, rubbed a hand over the dark skin of his shaved head to make a loud scratching noise on the stubbly hair before eyeing me. He seemed to like what he saw because he nodded and turned to get a void suit.

Bilkins started barking orders, separating the forces staying behind as we had before, and the marine lieutenant that was nominally in charge of the ship’s guard took them as if there was nothing wrong in the galaxy with being told what to do by a non-commissioned army guy wearing no rank on his clothing.

Landry and Coburn slipped their limbs into the void suits far quicker than I’d managed, betraying how muscle memory made a thing far simpler to do when you practiced it over and over.

Arming up, and being handed live breaching charges, me and West fell in line behind Landry as he paced for the forward airlock.

“The hardest thing about boarding a stealth boat is the simple fact that you can’t see the son of a bitch,” he said, his tone stating the obvious, but I actually hadn’t considered it until just then.

“The trick is to fire a shot when you’re getting near, just one, and let the HUD pick up the hull as debris. Use the instruments but do not fully trust them, because the last thing you want to do is hit the side of a boat in the void. For one, it’ll let them know what we’re doing, and for two, it’ll fuck you up and result in a mild case of death, you read me so far?”

I answered in the affirmative as he pushed through section after section, tightening and adjusting his gear as he went. The guy might be a little long in the tooth but his body just seemed to know what to do in a way that seemed almost automatic.

“Won’t they hear the shot hit?” West asked, probably taking mental notes to complete the part of the manual she hadn’t been shown. Hell, I didn’t even know if the stuff he was saying was even in any manual, because it sounded pretty much like he was making at least part of it up. A glance behind me at Coburn didn’t help much because the guy was unreadable.

We linked comms and sealed up, checking each other for any defects or mistakes, then stepped inside the airlock for the doors to shut behind us. Landry took the lead, bracing his left hand against the bulkhead and taking a knee before speaking into the channel, like what we were about to was a normal thing.

“Decompression won’t launch us like the tubes do, and we want to go nice and slow so they don’t register our signatures as weapons fire. West, you take aft with Coburn and take out the main engine heat sync. Barton, you get on my ass and stick like glue.”

My brain assimilated all that rapidly as West tugged at my arm to make me kneel beside her just in time for the outer door seal to pop and hiss as the compartment equalized pressure.

Now, I was okay in vacuum. Void jumps hadn’t really bothered me because I knew there were safety protocols and backups; only this time… shit, this time there was no safety protocol for anything we were doing.

If we screwed up, we were dead. On the plus side, if we did nothing and stayed onboard we were probably dead too, so it was either a win-win or a lose-lose situation, depending entirely on luck and perspective.

Weightlessness took us, allowing me to float out of the airlock doors behind Landry and follow his lead as he pulled himself close to the hull, bent his legs, and pushed off into the impossible darkness.

I copied his movement, activating the small thrustors on my void suit to match his speed and course while remaining off and above to his right.

My HUD showed literally nothing out there ahead of us, and a confirmation with the naked eye showed even less. How in the hell could an entire ship be out there in front of us? How could we not see it?

My brain and body connected to make the minor course corrections needed while the part of me that was actually paying attention went down the rabbit hole and started to panic for the first time about how big space actually was. The concept of infinity is easy to understand, but when it’s physically represented on the other side of a visor, it doesn’t really do it justice.

I could die here, right now, and spend a billion years floating in the same direction without anyone or anything even knowing I was there.

“Barton, switch on,” Landry said, making me realize I’d missed something he’d just said.

“Repeat,” I answered, keeping it crisp given the circumstances.

“I said move up and prepare to brace me,” he said, as if having been trained on how it worked only a few days before made me any kind of expert.

The theory of “bracing” someone in a void jump situation meant that I had to use my suit’s thrustors to stop him spinning out of control or otherwise ending up in a bad way when he exerted force in an opposing direction.

I mentioned before that I wasn’t stupid, but even I only understood the basics of this to be able to explain it. I could do it, I mean instinctively I could actually make the movements in the void, but if I had to teach a class, there’d be a lot of grunting and sign language.

The easiest way to say it, is the whole equal and opposite reaction thing. Imagine it’s like a massive game of three-dimensional pool, and the physics of everything affect everything else. Okay, I’ve just confused myself now. Forget I said that.

Anyway, Landry was about to shoot a gun in space. The force of the weapon discharging, of the micro reactor proving power to the excitor and sending a round downrange, had a reaction in the form of recoil. No matter how small that recoil was in atmosphere where gravity and stuff all came into play, out here even a small amount of recall could have your ass spinning backward so fast you passed out unless you got that shit under control.

My job was to stop him from doing that. No pressure.

“On my mark,” he said, cool as a damn cucumber regardless of the depth of shit we were in. “Three, two, one… firing.”

I felt the force of his upper body rotating back into me as the recoil tried to flip him just as I’d imagined, but even though it slowed both of us down, the three shots he’d fired didn’t change our vector too drastically. It was nothing a little thrust from the suits couldn’t fix.

After that we waited. I tried to do the math, calculating feet per second into kilometers so I could apply seconds to the distance… screw it, I couldn’t even think about how to begin figuring that out. Did I multiply it? What was the muzzle velocity of the weapon in the first place?

“I’ve got it,” West said maybe thirteen or fourteen seconds later, sounding a little more breathless than she usually did in the void. I thought that was pretty understandable given what the hell we were doing. Her words stopped my spiraling thoughts dead.

No sooner had she finished speaking than a waypoint showed up on my HUD that she’d shared with the channel, and for a second I thought I saw it.

It was like an apparition, like a darker black among the big black, and it was gone as soon as it had appeared. I tried the night-vision trick of not trying to focus directly on it, instead looking off to the side and allowing my eyes to go a little blurry, and I was rewarded with another fleeting sense of where it was.

Now, this makes zero sense to anyone who hasn’t actually seen it, but coming up on a stealth boat in the void is like walking toward a shadow in the dark. Yeah, like I said, zero sense, but that’s just what it was.

The HUD gave me a descending distance counter which threw me even more, because it was alerting me to a collision warning in a little over eleven clicks. That distance in the void is pretty much right in front of you, which was more than a little disconcerting.

“Begin deceleration,” Landry instructed, sounding so relaxed it was like listening to a damn meditation audio. I gently flared the suit’s thrustors, pointing them directly at the waypoint marker. I carried on letting off little pulses of power every few seconds until I’d bled off maybe a third of my velocity when Coburn called a warning.

“Shuttle inbound,” he said, making me scan wildly ahead for any sign of where it had come from but I saw nothing.

“Landry, Olympia,” came the words over the comm channel, earning another utterly unconcerned response.

“Send.”

“We’ve stalled them for as long as possible. They’re sending a boarding shuttle to take control of the ship now.”

“Roger, you delay that as long as you can and let my people handle the enemy team, understood?”

It was, and the channel was cut before a gasp over the team net made my gut tighten in fearful anticipation. The gasp was a result of seeing a shuttle coming right at us, or at least it felt like that, but as the navigation lights grew closer it passed overhead by maybe two or three hundred meters.

Perception of distance is screwed up out in the void—I think I mentioned that already, right?

“Eighteen hundred meters,” West called out with more control in her voice this time, like the closer she got to action the more focused she became.

We’ve all got HUDs, West, we don’t need the damn verbal, I thought to myself, but I didn’t say it because she might feel the urge to kick my ass for it. If we survived.

The countdown came slower, and I don’t mean that in a way that it felt like it did, like time was slowing down or some shit; I mean it literally came slower because we were all flaring more often now to decelerate. I didn’t exactly want to hit the side of a stealth boat and ring the damn dinner bell if I could avoid it.

And just like that I could make it out. A huge, rolling expanse of black ahead of me, maybe fifty meters from top to bottom, and above and below it were the distant stars.

“Gotcha,” I whispered, finally seeing just how damn small these things actually were. I fought the urge to look behind me at the Olympia for reference, but I didn’t want to screw with my trajectory and I didn’t need to look at the training ship to know this lethal little bastard could fit inside her hull twice over.

“Four hundred,” West reported.

“Don’t be in a hurry to get there, Barton,” Landry said, making me flare again because I realized I’d daydreamed a little too long and my HUD showed a distance of three seventy-seven. I got what he meant, even if we were in a hurry to get there.

I slowed to let Landry pass me on the left and veered to follow him in, angling toward the front section of the ship as West and Coburn went for the rear main engines. By the time my HUD was flashing red and beeping an imminent collision warning at me, all I could see in front of me was total blackness, and I wondered why they didn’t fit little sparkling lights to make the stealth boats blend in with the rest of space.

Because it’s a dumb fucking idea, idiot, that’s why, my brain shot back at me like it was pissed I’d even had such a moronic idea. I braced myself to make contact with the invisible wall ahead of me and counted it out.

“Three, two, one, contact.”

Chapter 24

CSS Olympia

“I say again, remove docking locks on primary shuttle airlock or open a shuttle bay door immediately. There will be no further warnings,” the British pilot demanded over the open comm link to the bridge.

The threat was implicit, and Sonora knew he couldn’t delay the inevitable any longer. Holding a finger vertically over his lips, he watched the officer controlling the communications terminal nod emphatically to say the channel was muted.

“Odin team, this is the captain. I can’t delay them any longer. Would you prefer I direct them to the aft port-side loading bay or the ventral shuttle airlock?”

Petty Officer First Class Darrel Bilkins thought fast to weigh up his options. The ventral shuttle bay would allow him to override the airlock controls and drop a grenade right into the shuttle below, but that could result in decompressing half the ship and losing the small number of people he had at his disposal.

If they opted for a less destructive approach to the ventral airlock option, the enemy could simply disengage and report back to the stealth boat that they were hostile, resulting in some heavy rainfall.

The aft shuttle bay on the port side was empty, he knew, and it was also closer. The open space of the bay would allow all of his team to bring their weapons to bear on whatever was coming for them, and although the numbers would be fairly even, he quickly came up with a simple plan that relied on utilizing the element of surprise.

All of that took less than a second for his brain to process, far faster than he could explain any of it, and he barked his answer right back: “Aft port shuttle bay.”

Hearing the acknowledgement in his ear, he turned, running hard for the right place and leading a group of marines, along with the last two candidates from one of the currently overlapping training and selection courses.

Switching to another encrypted channel, he called the senior Odin NCO.

“Landry, Bilkins. Ambush planned for aft port loading bay. What’s your ETA?”

“We’ll be ready when you are. Just say the word,” Landry answered coolly, making Bilkins smile a little, and cut the comm before reconnecting with the bridge of the Olympia.

“Bridge, I need safety override on the pedestrian airlock. I want our team inside it when the outer doors open. Acknowledge,” Bilkins transmitted. He was half expecting some resistance, as if safety regs mattered a damn in their current predicament, but to the credit of his fellow sailors, the slight delay in responding must have been a result of their compliance.

“Done, safety protocol override in effect,” a female voice came back to him. “I don’t need to remind you to be one hundred percent certain on which buttons you’re hitting, do I?”

The hint of informality, of rule breaking, make Bilkins smile.

“No, you do not,” he answered with a smirk on his face that translated into his tone. He had no intention of venting himself and everyone else into the void because he was under stress and pressed the button that ordinarily would prevent him from being able to open the wrong door.

A violent decompression, the collapse of his eardrums, and the flash-freezing of his body were all items on his list of things to avoid.

He led them into the airlock, ordering them all to crouch down below the level of the observation port, and closed the inner door.

Fournier, the bearded Canadian operator who Bilkins had found to be fairly impressive in most things apart from void jumping, handed him a small tablet. He looked at it, taking a few seconds to figure out what he was looking at, and rose to glance inside the loading bay before looking back to the screen.

He didn’t have time to ask how the man had gotten hold of an internal camera feed from the ship, because how wasn’t important at all.

“Bridge, we’re in position,” he said, watching the feed as the hull gave off a muted thump and vibrated under their feet. He gave a commentary to the others crouched in anticipation of a desperate fight. The majority of their little gang were marines, and the concept of fighting to repel boarders harked back to the days of their very inception.

“Doors opening… I see a shuttle…” he reported, ignoring the fact that his plan had forced them all to ignore the first safety lesson of space travel, having only a single door between their unprotected bodies and the void beyond.

Bilkins watched in silence as the enemy craft rotated just outside the outer doors to back into the loading bay. He could feel the tension all around him, could feel the sweat on his hands in spite of the bitter cold, and he waited for the right moment.

As the doors began to close behind the shuttle, he activated the comm again and gave Landry the green light.

* * *

“Copy that. Coburn, you’re a go,” Landry said. Gone was his lazy Sunday afternoon stroll tone, and instead he spoke with an edge to his words evocatively bloodthirsty.

Coburn acknowledged the order, nodding to West directly beside him as the two operators clung to the side of the silent killer with charges made ready. They activated them, pushing back from the hull and flaring thrustors hard to get clear of what was about to happen.

“Barton, you’re a go,” Landry said, waiting for the young candidate to activate his own sequence of breaching charges which would see most of the port side of the stealth boat’s forward section decompressing where the weapon ports were about to be blown open.

Landry triggered his own device, anticipating with more than a little cruel satisfaction what the controlled explosion would do when it penetrated the hull to send a lance of thermite directly through critical systems.

Pushing off and activating his thrustors to follow the others in a relative “down” direction, he called the bridge of the Olympia and requested they patch Bilkins in on the channel.

“Countdown set. As soon as those charges blow, you need to assault the boarding crew and hit that stealth boat with everything you have left.”

“Be advised, you are directly in our weapons path—”

“Negative, adjusting vector to go underneath. It’s danger close but you’re clear,” Landry cut them off. There was a delay caused by hesitation but the acknowledgment eventually came.

“Roger that, standing by—”

A flash of light at the rear of the stealth boat highlighted its back end for a fleeting moment before the gases ignited from the breach were smothered by the void and snuffed out. The heat syncs for the main engine went offline immediately, beginning an internal countdown to total destruction unless the crew could bring the damage under control and shut down their main reactors.

More explosions rippled along the hull, sending the stealth boat listing starboard as if it was beginning the slow process of going belly-up in front of them.

As that sight dominated their attention, streaks of reflected light shot through the void faster than an eye blink, and they watched as the heavy TKMs slammed silently into the side of the stealth boat to cave in huge sections and blow holes clean through others.

The attack, seen so rarely up close, was made all the more eerie by its total lack of sound or vibration.

* * *

Bilkins waited until the doors were shut and the atmosphere was eighty-five percent pumped back in before he blew their airlock. Feeling the rush of wind from behind him and the change of temperature were both just tiny, fleeting sensations.

He stalked straight ahead, weapon up and body turned front on to face their attackers, who weren’t caught quite so surprised as he’d hoped they would be.

It was easy for people to fall into the trap of diminishing the capabilities of their enemies. It was a constant source of entertainment to imagine all Russian forces drinking and fighting all day long, and for the British Royal Navy to be gentrified into comedic insignificance, but he had never fallen into those traps.

The men and women coming down the rear ramp toward him weren’t frozen to the spot by “Johnny Foreigner” breaking the rules of parlay, because those men and women were Royal Marines.

Their levels of fitness and quality of training were easily on a par with any high-level troops from any Earth territory, so to dehumanize and degrade their fighting abilities to make himself feel more secure was a fool’s game.

He fired, dropping the first two off the ramp before accurate return fire forced him into cover. Fournier and Valdez fought hard, both of them popping up from cover to fire a burst, then disappear out of sight before the other did the same. To either side the marines had split into two fire teams and were flanking the shuttle, and it seemed as if they’d sewed up the ambush pretty tight.

But the British marines evidently had other plans.

Grenades flew through the air, bouncing off the deck near the foot of the ramp, before the air filled with the crack of explosives and the flash of disorientation munitions.

The few seconds it took Bilkins to shake away the confusion meant that six of the enemy had successfully decamped the shuttle and had taken cover to begin exchanging fire with his people on three sides.

The operator leaned out from cover, took aim at the exposed leg of a marine firing his own bullpup rifle at Valdez’s last position, and squeezed off a burst that punctured the limb and sent the man sprawling out on the deck in sudden agony.

A marine on his own side took the initiative and sprayed the injured man with more gunfire to further tip the odds in their favor, but the pilot of the shuttle had other ideas.

In a screaming whine of engine noise, the shuttle lifted off to thump into the overhead and shake the deck beneath their feet. Spinning around unsteadily, Bilkins watched in horror as the exhaust heat scorched two Combined States marines. It flash-roasted them, cooking off their grenades and cutting off their tortured screams in puffs of smoke unheard over the roar of the engines.

The move didn’t only benefit the attackers, however, as the edge of the ramp was still lowered and spun to slam one Royal marine into his cover, knocking it down to expose three of the enemy to gunfire and trailing the bloody remains of the man who was missing the majority of his body from the chest down to add atomized blood to the jet wash.

Bilkins’ hands moved like they were programmed automatons and not controlled by his own brain. They switched from regular fire to the EOL— the explosive ordnance launcher—set beneath his barrel. Hands and body gesturing with fast, slick movements, he raised the weapon and paused a beat for the spinning shuttle to fall into place and fired.

The high-explosive bomb left the fat under-barrel launcher with an electronic vvvvvhumph sound that didn’t entirely betray the destructive capability of such a weapon at close quarters, although the ensuing noises were far from innocuous.

The shuttle’s interior flashed impossibly bright, and the sound of the engines died almost immediately as the hovering shuttle slammed back to the deck to crush two more invading marines under its dead weight.

A cry from behind made Bilkins spin, seeing Valdez’s feet scuffing on the deck as he fought desperately to get himself back into cover, clutching the shattered remains of his right hand.

His rifle was lost, no doubt when the trigger finger was blown away by the impact of an enemy round, and Bilkins acted again like a reactionary robot and swung his weapon back around to provide covering fire as the ping and whine of a bouncing bullet reached his ears.

The round that hit him was, ironically, a ricochet.

For all the lethal situations he’d been in during his service, to be killed by what was effectively an accident, by a stray bullet that hadn’t even been aimed at him, was his dying thought as he hit the deck flat on his back, the last strong spurts of blood pumping from the gaping wound in his neck.

Chapter 25

New Liberty Terminal

Komarov and Federova walked with their official escorts, both men noticing the obvious box formation the armed soldiers surrounding them adopted. Komarov also noted that none of them were mercenaries, and all carried themselves with the bearing of real military men and women, those who had served and been tested, and who either couldn’t let that life go or found themselves incompatible with a continued military existence.

These were the kind of people who found themselves classed as elite in the company of a private military such as the colony’s security forces, but that didn’t impress him.

What did impress him was when a man staggered from the knot of mercenary contractors to block their way. Perhaps impress wasn’t the right word. It amused him.

Both of Morris’ eyes were ringed in livid purple and a small dressing sat across the bridge of his swollen nose. Others tried to pull him back, either concerned about his imminent violence or—more likely—that he would get himself hurt again.

“Morris, leave it, man,” one of his friends said but the man clumsily shook off the attempt at restraining him.

“You… you’re fuckin’ dead, Ivan,” Morris slurred in a nasal voice.

The soldier at the front of their little arrangement glanced back and smiled at Komarov as if asking what he wanted him to do. The decision was made for him when Morris, either delirious through the pain and the shame he’d suffered or else under some chemical influence that made him act recklessly, drew the axe from his belt and planted his feet to block their path.

Weapons came up and the voice of the escorting officer snapped the air.

“Stand down. Stand down right now.”

“I don’t fucking work for you,” Morris snarled, his eyes fixed on Komarov and radiating murder. He raised a wavering hand to point his index finger at the Russian, who seemed so unconcerned with the threat that it angered him even further.

“Listen to him, Morris, and you might live long enough for your nose to heal,” Komarov said conversationally. “You should go now, while you still ca—”

“Fuck you! You’re dead, you hear me? You think the rest of special ops are going to just… just sit back after what you just did? Suckerpunch me? Me? You piece of shit, I’ll fuckin—”

“You are not with the special operations. You never were,” Komarov said, silencing him.

“We don’t have time for this. Soldier, stand down now or you’ll face charges,” the security forces officer said firmly. Morris ignored him, eyes still locked on Komarov and teeth bared like an animal.

“This?” Komarov said, pointing to the winged badge on his left sleeve. “This goes on other side, you do not know this?”

“I… we wear it on the left arm…”

“And that? Hah!” Komarov said, waving a meaty paw at the axe he held low. “That is replica. Go home, little boy, you do not belong here.”

Morris roared, raising the axe just as one of his so-called friends stepped up beside him and cracked the butt of his rifle into the back of Morris’ skull to make his knees give out and his eyes roll into his head. It was a kindness, not that Morris would see it that way.

“He’s got a concussion. He didn’t mean what he said,” the man told them as if setting the record straight.

“Get him to a medical facility, keep him there, and find his CO. Tell them to report to me directly,” the lead officer told two of his people.

Komarov walked on with their escort, stepping over Morris’ unconscious form, again with no regard for the man at all.

“What does it matter to you if Billy Bullshit back there was or wasn’t SOG?” one of the escorting officers asked him as they walked.

Komarov shrugged after considering the question.

“I do not like, how you say, fake-ass bitches,” he answered.

They were led to a three-story building of plexiglass and steel where the entire group walked through security as if the man in charge of their escort had no need to justify his presence to the men and women standing guard. Cramming into an elevator, they went up two floors and stepped out into the same sanitized interior as the lobby.

“Wait here,” the officer in charge told them before walking ahead and going out of sight. Komarov whistled tunelessly and looked around, catching the eye of a woman working at a computer terminal and winking mischievously. She yelped and looked back at her screen, pretending she didn’t even know he was there, which made the big man let out a slow, rumbling laugh.

“This way,” the officer said as he reappeared ahead of them and waved a hand to beckon them forward. Entering a wide corner office with an impressive view, they came to a man standing behind a desk wearing the same unfamiliar uniform. He eyed them suspiciously.

Federova, who hadn’t said a word even when Morris had barred their way with an axe, glanced around and spoke.

“O borzhe, Grigori?”

Another man leaning against the back wall pushed off and approached, his hand held out for the smaller of the two men to shake. Federova ignored the gesture and captured the man in a violent embrace that drove the air from his lungs and choked a laugh from his mouth.

The two men spoke excitedly in their native language for a few seconds before the man who believed himself to be ultimately in charge cleared his throat and spoke with a rich, deep Argentinian accent.

“I am pleased that you know our friend. He has been kind enough to facilitate negotiations between our government and your own.”

“You must be mistaken. We are private military contractors,” Komarov said with such a flippant tone that he openly admitted the ruse.

“And I am President of the Americas,” the man answered, eyeballing the big Russian for a few seconds before deciding to take control of the situation.

“I am Colonel Carrera of the New Liberty Terminal government. I am also the minister of security, which means you are here at my invitation in whatever capacity you wish to believe. Now, I…” He looked up and waved the rest of his people away, waiting for them to back out before resuming.

“I have invited you here for two reasons. First, I believe there are elements of hostile forces on this planet attempting to support a coup for leadership of the government, and second, I am making a formal request to your government to support us as a patron nation.”

Komarov looked at the man Federova evidently knew, seeing him as the agent of his nation’s external security bureau, before looking back to Carrera. He took a seat and leaned back to look up at the man as if assessing him.

“I have… questions, Colonel.”

Carrera sat and returned the gaze equally. He opened his hands to invite those questions, and Komarov sat forward to count them off on his fingers.

“What is the benefit to the New Russian Confederacy? What do you know of the Combined States military unit here? And why now?”

Carrera held up his right hand and raised his index finger.

“We will provide materials and resources to you at reduced cost, as well as permitting you, as our trusted allies, to establish military bases in this system. We will even help you do this.”

He raised his thumb beside the index finger.

“My operatives believe that a minority of senior government members have engaged in a covert meeting outside the city. There was a report of an unrecorded shuttle landing which, when a patrol was sent to investigate, led to their disappearance.”

He raised the middle finger beside the other digits and dropped his hand onto the desk, sitting forward to speak with a passion bordering on anger.

“And third, I am tired of the Combined States government taking whatever they feel should be theirs.”

And our assistance would leave you as president of this place, Komarov thought but didn’t say out loud.

He recognized greed—greed for power and influence—when he saw it, but that didn’t mean the deal wasn’t a good one for his own people.

He considered the man a moment longer, thinking that he must have a long-suffering memory if he was still bitter because the South American continent had fallen in line with Canada and the North American states.

He didn’t care whether it was personal bitterness or self-serving aggrandizement; the fact that the man was willing to open the doors to the system was significant. It was exactly what he suspected the Americans were doing there, only they didn’t have the support of the man who gave the small standing army their orders.

“I believe we are, how you say, on the same page, Colonel. I need to speak to my government, and after this—if they agree to your terms—I will personally take care of the traitors in your government along with their new friends.”

* * *

Grigori, who seemed to have no official title, entertained them in the office he occupied one floor below. It was clear from the standards of his personal space that he was being treated as an honored guest, being afforded prime real estate inside the command building of the security forces under the ambiguous banner of an “advisor.” This also showed them just how willing certain people in New Liberty were inclined to be.

“It is safe to talk here, Grigori?” Komarov asked when the door closed behind them. In response, the agent opened a drawer and produced a device for him. Komarov took it, activating it with a switch on the side, and began scanning the room for any listening devices. After thirty seconds of silence, he nodded to himself and tossed it back to the agent.

“You have communications established?” Komarov asked, sitting down again.

“I have tight beam to our ships in deep orbit. Last reports from them said a strong force of enemy is coming.”

“And we are calling for reinforcements?” Federova asked, concerned that their entire plan would shatter if a strong occupying force arrived to nullify any agreement made on the surface.

Grigori nodded and held a finger pointed at the ceiling.

“Carrera did not say, but there is also a satellite defense grid that would be a problem for them.”

“And we have control of this?”

Grigori shook his head. “It is controlled from the station in orbit, but Carrera has people there.”

“Do we?” Komarov asked, getting his answer by way of a smile from the spy.

“How certain are they of the location and intelligence?” Federova asked.

“They have a man in the protection detail of a minister, who is “leaning our way,” so I am told. He has reported location of the meeting and the presence of people he believes to be American soldiers,” Grigori told him.

“Establish communications,” Komarov instructed, waiting as the man typed a long sequence of characters into his terminal before spinning the screen to show the major.

Komarov looked, seeing only a text link.

“Inform them of the offer,” he said, watching as Grigori typed fast. The icon flashed for a few seconds before a counter responded to verify the link was activated by the agent. Grigori typed again, adding the nonsensical response to the confusing statement which was the obvious code and response which Komarov knew he would have memorized for each changing iteration. Giving Komarov a nod, he composed the message dictated by the major.

“Sent,” Grigori said after a while spent typing rapidly.

They sat in silence while the message was relayed and discussed on the other end, thousands of kilometers away. The silence was an easy one as none of them felt insecure enough to fill the void with unnecessary, idle talk.

“We have an answer,” Grigori said as the screen came to life with rolling text.

“Plan is approved. Reinforcements inbound. Orders to deal with enemy covert operatives and nullify government resistance before main forces arrive.”

“Tell them it will be my pleasure to do this,” Komarov answered with a cold look of anger descending over his features.

Reinforcements came in the form of three men and a woman arriving by civilian shuttle less than an hour later. Their equipment was so heavy they used a two-man, powered cart to move it down the ramp operated, and when Komarov met them at the arrivals port they were waved through the customs process without being checked, amid shouts of anger and cries of unfair treatment from those waiting in long lines to pass through security.

“Welcome to New Liberty Terminal, my name is Lieutenant…” the officer facilitating their unmolested arrival said, trailing off into silence as the team wandered straight past him and fanned out in front of Komarov, who smiled at them before his rumbling voice filled the air.

“Comrades. Anybody ready to kill?”

Chapter 26

New Liberty Terminal

Covert meeting rooms

“I’m sorry, but you can’t make any move on seizing power until our main forces arrive,” Mark repeated, not afraid to let the fact that he was losing his patience show in his tone.

“And why not?” one of the government officials asked peevishly. Mark turned to face the man, feeling him withdraw a little, so he softened the expression he wore.

“Major, perhaps I might be able to better explain?” Aubrey Sharpe interjected smoothly. Mark waved a frustrated hand in the general direction of the discussion.

“What the major is trying to say, is that your political opposition is the controlling element of the security forces. Any move you make on Mister Carrera without the support of those forces would likely result in failure on a catastrophic level,” she said, not even looking at Mark to apologize for explaining the same thing in as many words as he’d used.

“Look at every coup in history—and make no mistake we are planning a coup here,” said the female minister who seemed to be the real driving force behind the move. “Every successful coup in history had significant military support. Chile, Turkey, Sweden, Afghanistan. All of them had majority military support or had swayed enough senior leaders to command their troops to take part. We don’t have that.”

“No, but we have our personal security detail. And we have them,” the man said stubbornly, gesturing at the nearest armed person in a manner that was dismissive at best.

That person was Edwards, and she took exception to his tone and mannerism. Glancing at Mark with a raised eyebrow, she saw him just shrug and pull a face that she took to mean, “have at the prick.”

“Excuse me?” she said politely, almost sweetly. He turned to look at her and hit strike two with his next words.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

Edwards smiled. It was not a kind smile. It was the smile of an adult saltwater crocodile back on Earth.

“First off, call me sweetheart again and I’ll crush every bone in your left hand. Second, you’ve wasted enough of everyone’s time now by refusing to get it through your ignorant skull that the eleven of us and a handful of security guards cannot and will not facilitate a military coup. Now, we either wait for reinforcements and make a move or we pack up and go. Then you’re free to do whatever you want.”

Sharpe smiled and patted her on the leg in a sisterly fashion.

“Thank you, Captain, Edwa—”

“I’m not done,” Edwards said, eyes still leveled on the man. “Now I’m not a politician, in case you hadn’t realized, so I’m going to lay this out for you very simply without beating about the bush or kissing your ass. Us helping you take control is not doing it the easy way. Doing it the easy way would be to bring our forces in, remove your government and install our own. The concessions made to you have been very generous and I’m guessing they’ve been made in the interests of long-term peace and blah blah. Now, shut up and stop repeating the same point without any new information because frankly you are just pissing everyone off.”

She turned to face Sharpe with a smile again. “Now I’m done.”

With that she stood and walked to the exit past Mark who looked a little shocked at her calm outburst. Not entirely shocked, she noticed. Maybe “amused” and “entertained” were thrown in the mix too.

“So, how soon can we expect these reinforcements?” the female minister asked, moving on as if the man she’d been getting annoyed at herself hadn’t just been sent to the corner to suck his thumb.

“Twelve hours,” Anders responded, having been the last one to communicate with the Silence in orbit and having the most up-to-date intelligence.

“Given that things are likely to be a little dicey, I’d like to move you all to our compound until the flotilla arrives and starts securing the airspace prior to landing troops. When they do, we’ll coordinate an approach on the capital and give the other ministers the opportunity to get onboard, but I’m assuming Carrera will have to be removed from office by force.

Two of the politicians scoffed at that, making it clear that Carrera was a “pry it out of my cold, dead hands” kind of guy.

“Why do we have to go? Can’t we return home and wait?” asked the man seemingly created for the sole purpose of arguing every point.

“Depends if you feel like getting your transport rammed off the road and being dragged away with a bag over your head for a little light renditioning,” Anders said, not mixing his words now that the path was set.

The man looked from face to face in the room as if the enormity of what they’d been planning all along had just hit him in the face. The fact that he might need to take some personal risk had eluded him right up until that moment, and panic set in only a second later.

“No! No, no, no… no,” he said, fleshy cheeks flapping from side to side as he impersonated someone being electrocuted. He stood, heading for the door looking like he was about to throw up. Mark jerked his chin at Anders, who followed, calling out for the man’s personal detail down the stairs as he went.

With the door still open, Edwards could see one of the uniformed security personnel passing from the direction of the balcony Sharpe had frequented to smoke, and the lingering look he shot inside the room set the fine hairs on her arms standing on end.

“Perhaps this is a good time to take a break?” Sharpe announced to the room, her voice bright and positive. Muttered agreement answered her and she rose to walk toward the door. Edwards, waiting by the exit still watching in the direction of the man she didn’t trust but couldn’t say why, made to fall in beside Sharpe.

“Bathroom?” she asked, hoping the answer was yes.

“No, you go ahead. I’ll get some fresh air,” Sharpe responded as the young man of her entourage appeared beside her. Edwards hesitated but Sharpe was insistent.

“I’ll be fine. It’ll be two minutes,” she said reassuringly as her assistant handed over the pack, and held up one finger before slipping away.

Edwards nodded and turned away, enjoying the ten seconds of quiet she’d gotten in the stall before two other women walked in and started talking about an unrelated subject that held no interest for her—something about someone’s wife—when that same sensation of something being wrong came back to her.

* * *

On the balcony, relieved of the need to put on her best negotiator’s face, Aubrey Sharpe leaned her head back in the shadows of the corner she occupied and blew out a stream of smoke with her eyes closed.

The door slid open and closed again as footsteps sounded on the dark balcony, making Sharpe open her eyes, expecting to see her own man but instead laying eyes on the back of a uniformed guard.

That back was hunched over as if the man were peering closely at something held near to his face. As she processed that thought, she heard the whispered words in the still, night air.

“Location confirmed. Eleven enemy, five ministers… yeah…”

Sharpe held her hand over her mouth and dropped the burning cigarette onto the floor beside her feet, staying absolutely still in case she did anything to give away her presence.

The man muttered some more words before the doors slid open again and her aide stepped out. To find the security guard wheeling to face him wearing a look of angry fear.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you… say, what’ve you got there?”

Before Aubrey could move or speak, before she could scream for help or warn anyone, the guard took two long strides toward the aide and brought his right hand down hard like an axe blow.

The sickening sound of metal impacting bone filled the balcony and the man slumped only to be caught by the guard before he could hit the deck.

She watched in horror as the guard straightened his own body and turned to drop her man over the railing to the ground twenty or more feet below.

She didn’t hear the crunch of his unconscious body meeting concrete because she was screaming involuntarily. The guard turned, eyes wide as he thought himself alone out there, and his right hand instinctively went for the weapon holstered on his right thigh. She could only watch as the barrel rose to point toward her.

* * *

Edwards passed Mark on the landing at a dead sprint, having accelerated hard on the carpeted floor heading for the balcony. He didn’t ask what was wrong, didn’t try to stop her, he simply crouched his center of gravity and tensed his body to launch himself after her.

She tore open the sliding door with her left hand as her right was drawing the weapon and, still moving, she raised the barrel to aim at the man holding a gun to her principal.

“Drop it or I’ll blow her fu—”

Edwards’ weapon let out a single, percussive twang and the words were cut short by his head snapping back before he slumped, dragging a shrieking emissary with him.

“Are you hit? Did I hit you?” Edwards yelled as she dropped to her knees beside her, cradling the woman who clung to her and continued screaming.

Mark moved in behind, Mac on his shoulder with his weapon up sweeping the corners. Mark kicked the pistol clear of the body, checking the man with the bright beam of the tiny weapon light to see a hole punched through his face just right of the bottom of his nose. He didn’t need to see the back of his head because it was spread out over the rest of the balcony in a straight line of gore.

“He killed Anthony! He killed Anthony!” Sharpe yelled over and over as Edwards continued to check her for injuries.

“Why? What happened?”

“He… he was using a radio or something… Anthony…”

Mark peered over the edge of the balcony and shone his light down as the comm channel erupted with demands for a report.

“Standby one, DeLuca,” Mark answered, adding a hissed curse as his beam found the crumpled and broken body of the thin man who shadowed their VIP.

“A radio? What did he say?” Edwards asked. Sharpe was panting close to hyperventilation so Edwards gave her body a quick shake to focus her. “What did he say?”

“He said… he said the location was confirmed… a-and then he said how many of you there were…”

“All units, immediate evac! Immediate evac! Location compromised,” Mark snapped into the comm, having heard what she’d said and drawn the obvious conclusions.

“We have inbound,” Coates said in that cold, calm tone she used right before she was about to light someone up.

“Clear to engage,” Mark said as he bent and dragged Sharpe to her feet by her upper arm. She didn’t resist, still clinging to Edwards, who smothered the woman and half carried her back inside where the hornet’s nest had been well and truly kicked.

Shouts of alarm and demands to know what was happening sounded thick in the air over the thumping of multiple feet going down the stairs.

The civilians were bundled into the truck and orders were shouted but Coates, who watched the eastern approach with her diminutive spotter, remained on station to the end.

“Coates, what are you seeing?” Mark asked in a tone of hurry up.

“Four vehicles headed this way. Can’t be anything good.”

“Are they in range?” DeLuca asked.

“Affirmative, waiting on target confirmation,” Coates answered.

“Assume hostile. Kill their trucks if you can,” Mark ordered, seeing the vehicle lights illuminating the expression on DeLuca’s face. His expression was one of grim resolve as he knew all too well what it meant to engage a potential enemy when there was even the slightest chance of being wrong about it.

Coates followed orders with no such reservations, and shots rang out above them in steady intervals as she fired at the target as yet too far away for the others to see or hear.

“Okay, let’s move,” DeLuca barked when the firing ceased. The two sniper teams broke off and slid down the metal ladders fast with their weapons slung across their backs to hit the dirt and throw themselves aboard.

“Hit it!” DeLuca said again, causing their driver, Bryan, to stomp on the throttle and kick up dust.

“Okay, listen up, we’ve got a few hours before reinforcements reach us, so we retreat and consolidate. Hold out long enough to get some more boots on the ground with us, then we move to take the city,” Mark said, telling them that this wasn’t unexpected and it didn’t change the overall plan. What was unexpected, at least to those New Liberty natives, was Mac going down the line of civilian security forces with his weapon trained on the face of each man until they’d handed over their firearms to Anders and were searched by rapid, rough hands.

“Hey man, we didn’t have nothing to do with that shit,” one protested.

Mac snorted.

“Uh-huh,” he said, moving on to the next person as if it didn’t matter one bit if they knew or were involved or not because they couldn’t be trusted under the circumstances.

“Buddy, we can help,” another said to Anders almost conspiratorially but found himself ignored.

“Disabled two trucks and put rounds through the screen of another. I saw three more fanning out to go around them,” Coates reported from somewhere near the back of the truck.

“Okay, safe to assume Carrera’s security forces are onto us,” Mark responded. “The plan remains: consolidate at the compound and hold out for reinforcements. Edwards? Get on the comm as soon as we’re back, tell the Silence that we’re anticipating an attack and siege scenario. Tell them we have precious cargo vital to the continued peaceful occupation of this system and inform them that security forces are considered hostile.”

Edwards nodded in the dark interior before adding a verbal acknowledgement of her orders. She knew she wasn’t being kept off the front line as much as she was being given a task she was best suited to.

DeLuca’s voice filled the comm as he gave his own orders to his team, deploying them in advance to set defensive positions where they knew their areas of responsibility.

“Sure would be nice to have a couple heavies,” Mac grumbled to Anders as the two men sat to keep eyes on the security detail who seemed unsure if they were prisoners or not.

“Be even better if the stealth boat could spare us a few TKMs,” Anders answered, making Mac shudder at the memory of being danger-close to the last two bombardments he’d seen.

“Yeah, that would really fuck up their night, right?” one of the security detail said, overhearing their conversation and trying to ingratiate himself with them. Both special operators turned to stare at the man in the low light of the truck’s interior, silencing him without a word.

“Sixty seconds out,” Bryan’s voice came from the cab ahead of them via their earpieces.

“All right, people, we all know what we need to do. Bryan and Louisa,” DeLuca said. “I want the VIPs sealed off in the panic room and their detail secured elsewhere before you get your asses back on the line ready to rock.”

Chapter 27

CSS Olympia

“Sir, we have a jump lane opening ahead,” the lieutenant working the sensor console reported to her captain. Sonora acknowledged the report with a nod.

“All hands, prepare to exit jump lane,” he said over the ship’s address system. He’d had a few hours while they traveled along the interstellar highway to consider what was about to happen. He knew that best-case scenario would see them drop out into an empty patch of space on the far side of the system called New Liberty Terminal, but worst-case scenario would see them run headlong into an NRC blockade.

He also had time to comprehend what the mismatched ensemble under his command had achieved, repelling two boarding attempts and void jumping to cripple a stealth boat. On top of that, destroying the pursuing patrol vessel that had hunted them down amounted to almost the entirety of the action Sonora had seen during his whole career.

He’d often wondered how he would fare when and if he was ever measured as a commander in combat, and he had surprised himself by not being found wanting.

The time for celebration and self-congratulation was not now, because while they’d escaped the trap laid for them, they still had a strong pursuing force behind them.

The enemy would be stinging from the savage low blow his skeleton crew had dealt them, and given the choice between uncertainty ahead and certain capture or destruction behind, he had no option but to choose uncertainty.

It had been years since he’d had to think on his feet this fast. Years since he had been tested by any situation more difficult than selecting his meals and too late, he realized that he missed that thrill.

Too late, he realized, that he was good at it.

“All weapons systems online ready for target packages. Prepare to exit,” he announced to the bridge, receiving a flurry of “aye, aye” responses. He was calm, resigned even, and he allowed himself a moment’s thought for the ancient warriors back home who went into battle believing themselves already dead, armed with faith that they could earn back their lives through fighting hard and winning, and that thought led him to the mythology surrounding the inception of the Odin teams.

Allowing himself a small smile of regret—regret that he hadn’t discovered this thirst for combat two decades before—he imagined how his life would have been if he’d become one of them when he was a young pilot instead of simply going with the flow and seeing where life’s current took him.

“Exit in three, two, one…”

Three tense seconds of silence hung in the air before the ship came under fire. Heavy, dull clanging noises shook his teeth as the warning shots hammered their hull and the comm panel lit up.

“Sir! NRC ships demanding we cut thrust and surrender!”

Sonora didn’t ask for the report, simply waited for the display to refresh and show him three ships holding a loose cordon around the jump lane departure coordinates.

His analytical mind recognized the enemy signatures and accessed the catalog of target intelligence he stored deep within his mind in that place that he rarely used.

Two he might’ve been able to handle. He could’ve outrun one of them for sure, only nothing in their entire combined fleet—not even the Japanese fast attack boats—could outrun the heavy guns of the destroyer holding the center of the line against them.

The smaller ships were both patrol vessels similar to the one he’d duped and scattered in open space far from where they were now, but the combination of the big guns and the faster ships spelled doom for their old, slow and weakly armed training ship.

How in the hell did a safe posting end up like this? he asked himself before another rippling wave of small impacts shook him back to the moment.

“Distance to the planet?” Sonora asked, earning the instant response telling him it was a little over a million kilometers. Calculating it in his head, he knew the distance was too great for anyone to make it alone.

“Send a response, inform them we are a non-combat vessel,” he ordered, hoping to buy some time but guessing that the NRC and their allies didn’t much care about the capacity of their enemy. They weren’t tactical like the CS military were, and still thought in terms of pure attrition. They were brawlers, not surgeons, and he gambled on his knowledge of their enemy.

Not waiting for a response, he gave other orders which shocked the bridge crew into silence.

“Order all personnel to the shuttle bay and prepare to abandon ship. Weapons? Paint me every target package you have on a preset and stand down from your post.”

A flurry of protests and objections rushed at him in answer, but he held up a calm hand for silence.

“Sir, enemy vessel responding… They’re ordering us to stand down and surrender again, or else they will open fire.”

“Understood, Lieutenant. Advise them we are trying to power down, then you are relieved,” Sonora said. He was as calm as he sounded. He was at peace with the decision he’d made, even before they knew there were enemy ships waiting for them. This was his command, his decision, and his responsibility.

“Captain, we’re getting… we’re getting an encrypted message from one of ours,” the same lieutenant announced, having stubbornly refused to abandon her post as ordered. “It’s from the CSS Silence.”

* * *

Onboard the Silence orbiting the nearest planetary body, Jenner was in command as the captain was taking a few hours of mandatory rest in his cabin.

As always, whenever anything happened in a time of war, the two things occurred at the same time.

The jump lane exit spat out a ship sending the NRC vessels burning hard at the new player on the board, and when those sensor readings reached the stealth ship, it caused a stir.

“Sir, it’s a training vessel! The Olympia.”

“What the hell are they doing all the way out here?” Jenner asked nobody in particular before shaking his head to dismiss the irrelevant thought.

“Send an encrypted tight beam to them, get authentication and find out what the hell they’re doing here,” Jenner ordered as he tapped a finger on the console to alert the captain that his time to rest was being cut short.

The Olympia responded immediately, giving the correct current authentication and a brief sitrep explaining how they’d been caught out alone in the cold.

“Dammit, we can’t leave them to get hammered like that. Take us in, maximum burn. Reassess target packages on enemy ships,” he ordered, waiting vital seconds for the orders to be carried out before Stahl entered the bridge after they’d broken orbit and set off fast for the contact.

Jenner moved to give up the seat straight away, but the captain waved him back down and asked for a report. It was given succinctly, and he paused for a few seconds before the comm terminal bleeped an alert.

“Incoming priority from Odin Nine-Five on the surface,” the operator announced, turning Stahl’s attention.

“Nine-Five reporting mission compromised. Incoming enemy force on their position. Mission-critical assets at that location.”

“Timeframe?” he asked, waiting as the information was passed and relayed back.

“Immediate, sir.”

“Mister Jenner, I have the con,” Stahl said, taking control of his vessel once again. “Bring us about, prepare a full barrage of missiles and torpedoes, target that destroyer.”

He waited a few beats for the requested ordnance to be programmed and declared ready before pointing at the comm operator. Commands were pressed and the captain received a nod of readiness. Lifting a handset, he composed himself and pressed the talk button.

“Olympia actual, Silence actual, how copy?”

“Olympia actual, good copy,” came the calm response that made Stahl appreciate the professionalism.

“Olympia, be advised we are on-mission with time-critical actions to take. Sending you all the help we can offer right now through the medium of a barrage of ordnance, so be prepared to make your break and good luck.”

“Acknowledged, Silence actual, and much appreciated,” came the response that left a chill in the air. All of the bridge crew hearing those words felt the sense of imminent death in the man’s words which sobered them like a plunge into cold water.

“God speed, Olympia. Silence out.”

Stahl returned the handset and turned to sit in the command chair before giving more orders.

“Weapons, fire all set ordnance at that destroyer. Give our boys and girls a fighting chance. Take us back to orbit and prepare ground strike munitions. Sound battle stations,” he said as the rippling thump of launch tubes opening rattled their hull.

* * *

The missiles and torpedoes fired from so far away were useless unless they could hold off the NRC long enough for them to arrive.

The distances involved in space combat were so huge, so unfathomable, that it seemed humanity simply recycled old tactics for use with new technology.

Back then, nobody had invented laser beams weapons, not any powerful enough to be of use great distances through the void, at least. Furthermore, the experimentation with the use of microwaves and radiation-based weapons had yet to yield anything worthy of deployment, which left humans doing what they had been doing from the first time they decided to try and kill each other from different boats.

They got up close and they hammered them with everything they had.

Unless a ship traveled at a steady speed on the same heading, it was near on impossible to predict where they would be when a weapon was fired, which led to the smart targeting systems employed on all missiles and torpedoes fired by the Silence.

The missiles, visible on sensors thanks to their high speed, caused panic onboard the three NRC vessels as they postured and maneuvered to bring their point defense cannons online ready to blast the missiles out of the void.

That was a deliberate tactic by Stahl onboard the stealth boat, because the technology of the enemy PDCs had overtaken the technology of their own missiles. What they lacked, however, was the sensor capability to detect the slightly slower moving torpedoes which carried with them a significant dollar value, as they were shrouded in the same material that rendered the ship firing them invisible under most circumstances.

The tactic was sound and had proved to work time after time, so when the NRC destroyer began blazing away with kinetic munitions to destroy the missiles, it also began moving fast to avoid the subsequent impacts of the torpedoes their intelligence suggested would be coming.

It didn’t work, not entirely. As soon as the PDCs fell silent, having destroyed all but two of the missiles that impacted, causing minor damage, the destroyer began to change position again to give chase to the lone ship that had arrived in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Before it could engage full power to pursue, impacts struck from stern to bow as the torpedoes followed their onboard targeting program to divert and strike from a different direction.

The destroyer, dead from the time the second torpedo penetrated the armored hull to detonate close to vital ship’s system controls, suffered three more impacts, but not before it sent an entire barrage of kinetic munitions along the escape path of the only enemy in sight.

It broke apart, sections of the ship tumbling end over end to infinity or until some salvage operation arrested its momentum, leaving the two scattered patrol vessels coming under fire from the escaping ship.

* * *

“Enemy ship destroyed!” the lieutenant yelled.

“Understood. Now report to the shuttle bay immediately, Lieutenant,” Sonora snapped. He was out of the captain’s seat now and standing over the weapons console, having pretty much chased his crew from the bridge. The lieutenant was the only stubborn member of his people remaining, and he wasn’t about to let her die by his choices.

“But, Captain, I can—”

“You can get your ass to the shuttle bay, right fucking now, Lieutenant,” Sonora snarled, and it unleashed the stress he held so deep inside himself. She stopped, shocked by his sudden anger when he’d shown nothing but calm until then, and he half expected her to stand straight and offer him a salute like they were enacting a scene from some damn movie.

She didn’t. Instead, she ran to him and threw her arms around his neck.

“Set the autopilot and report there yourself,” she whispered over the sounds of alarms and impacts.

“Go, Lieutenant,” he said, pushing her away from him gently. She left, torn between trying to save a life and saving her own by following orders.

Sonora worked, not turning to see his last crewmember exit the bridge, and set every piece of ordnance they had left ready to fire as impact after impact set off new alarms and shut down systems to make the control consoles blink out to darkness. Rolling the ship so it effectively showed its belly, he resumed the fight with fresh, undamaged armor facing his pursuers.

He always considered the concept of the captain going down with the ship to be the bullshit of stories, of Yanagimoto, of Kerr, of Doorman, but now when he was faced with that very prospect, he understood it on a cellular level.

He worked the controls, running between helm and weapons consoles as he intermittently adjusted course and speed while firing off a new target package at the two surviving patrol ships.

The final salvo from the destroyer had been the end of them, he knew that in his heart, as the failing systems threatened to kill the power to the bridge. If that happened, he’d be faced with the choice of sitting there to accept a pointless fate with stoicism or running for his life in an attempt to make it to the shuttle. He told himself if that happened, if he could no longer be of use on the bridge, then he would run for safety so long as all of his crew had made it out first.

More impacts rocked the ship, sending him flying off his feet as a conduit exploded to vent a jet of fire into the bridge. Scrambling for the respirator under the captain’s chair, he barely managed to get it on before the automatic fire suppression systems still active sucked the oxygen from the room to extinguish the flame.

Turning back to the console, he fired another pair of missiles at the nearest ship before the console went blank and he lost all control.

Running to the helm, he felt his feet lift off the deck as the ship’s gravity began to falter with the failing power, only to find that that too had lost all control.

He was flying a dead stick with no way to shoot back, and the time to get out was now.

He ran, respirator making his breath steam up the goggles, so he tore it off and dropped it to run, bouncing off bulkheads and frames as the gravity cut in and out to make him feel like he was running an assault course on a giant inflatable raft floating on choppy water.

Repeating the endless sequence of reaching a sealed door and undogging the hatch before climbing through, he opted for speed over safety as he was certain the ship was doomed anyway.

Making it almost all the way to the airlock doors at the aft section of the ship, he faltered at the sight of a body thrown down beside a sparking wall conduit that seemed to have exploded. Looking down and rolling that body over, he was rewarded by a groan of pain coming from the blackened skin of the lieutenant’s face to tell him she was still alive.

The conduit exploded again, peppering his back with shrapnel and causing him to cry out in pain, but he focused on the injured young officer and tried not to think of what would have happened to her if he hadn’t taken the brunt of that second explosion.

Hauling her up, he punched the controls to the airlock and cycled it through, almost dropping her as his boots slid on the slick fluid coating of the deck, as some other substance ran hot down his back.

Staggering across the airlock, he fell to his knees and spilled the woman he was carrying onto the deck for two men to rush over and drag them both aboard.

Sonora felt the violent decompression of the bay being explosively blown open, and the surge of competing forces on his body as they flew out to make their escape.

He heard a med tech working on the lieutenant, happy that she was in the best hands available, and closed his eyes as he floated in zero gravity before the rapid acceleration forced his dying body back against the closed ramp.

Chapter 28

Barton

Inter-System Space, New Liberty

I’d spent enough time afloat that I didn’t think much out in the void scared me. Hearing the words “abandon ship,” however, made my balls shrivel up so hard it took my damn breath away.

Landry didn’t waste a second and ordered us to break for the shuttle bay again before shouting into the comm for his people to return to him on the double.

I knew there was hardly any crew onboard, so when a few frightened ratings started showing up, we overrode the airlock safety protocols and ran them straight through past the pile of bodies to the shuttle that was being warmed up by one of the crew rated to fly it.

I saw the faces of some of them blanch when they took in the meat pile that was the NRC boarding party, as others were either too frightened of the situation to register it or else they’d seen death up close and personal before.

“Barton, Valdez, strip all the weapons off those assholes,” Landry snapped as he started stripping his void suit off. I did what I was told, finding myself utterly powerless to do anything but what he told me to do. People like that were rare, and command to him came as naturally as most guys getting a morning boner.

We rolled the corpses over to pull the slings of their weapons over heads and shoulders. They were the parachute stock version of the primary rifle the NRC used, and although my lack of familiarity with their weapons meant I didn’t know how to handle them in the same slick way as our own, I knew what the different models were. I also knew more than enough to be capable of pointing the dangerous end at the bad guys.

Telling the different kinds of enemy weapons apart wasn’t difficult, because they essentially had one rifle that came in short, regular, long distance, and heavy caliber versions, like the creators thought they’d nailed the design first time out and just tweaked the edges and barrel length to fit all occasions.

It was harder taking the spare ammunition for them—all standard fit like ours but designed specifically to fit only their weapons and not ours—because they were attached to carriers on their armor which would need cutting off to do it fast.

We emptied the pouches to stack a pile of magazines beside the reclaimed weapons, and one of the engineering ratings saw what we were doing and ran around looking for something until he found a crate he could use to collect them all up.

I didn’t have time to even give him a nod to thank him for using his initiative instead of just strapping into the shuttle’s seat waiting to get their asses rescued like a few of the ship’s crew were doing.

“How many left?” Landry demanded of the last officers through the open airlock. Before anyone could answer, the ship bucked and groaned violently, and I knew I wasn’t the only one looking at the outer airlock doors, as they were the only thing keeping the atmosphere inside.

One direct hit there and we all bought a ticket to destination fucked, only mine and West’s fate would be freezing to death before we ran out of oxygen, floating in the void, or else suffocating before we froze because we were still in our void suits, minus the helmets that were clipped to our belts.

“How many?” Landry yelled again, grabbing the last man through.

“Just the captain and lieutenant,” the young man gasped before Landry propelled him toward the open door of the shuttle.

Landry seemed to hesitate with his hand raised to the airlock controls, and I guessed he was trying to decide whether to run back inside for two people or save the twenty already on the shuttle. With a grimace, he slapped the heel of his hand into the big red button to lock it before stalking back to me as I carried the last armful of rifles to the little ship.

More impacts rocked the ship and made me drop a few of the guns, so he stopped to help me retrieve them, just as an explosion flashed on the other side of the airlock.

“Time to go, people,” he announced as he walked onboard.

“I need another minute!” came the yell from the cockpit. Landry didn’t answer, and again I guessed it was because saying something helpful like reminding them they didn’t have another minute didn’t fall into the category of helpful shit to say that would only increase stress levels.

Thirty seconds passed while I went back to the pile of bodies for one last sweep in search of anything useful, when I heard the airlock cycling.

“Landry!” I yelled, ignoring the need to use his very senior rank in favor of not wasting his damn time. He must’ve heard the tone of my voice because he came running in time to see the airlock open and a guy in naval uniform drop to his knees carrying an unconscious female wearing the same naval uniform.

His back was sheeted in blood which was made to look way worse that it was on account of the white shirt showing a hideous contrast. When I got closer, I saw I was wrong, because the exposed flash of white where his shirt and back muscles had been blown away to show a couple of ribs looked a hell of a lot worse than the blood had.

Landry didn’t waste any time, just grabbed the woman by her arm and dragged her to the shuttle screaming for a medic. I did the same with the guy I belatedly realized was the ship’s captain, only I was careful not to drag his back over the deck and squatted low to stand up with him over my right shoulder.

We got them both aboard, the ramp shut and the outer door was blown open before the shuttle bumped through the debris to escape the dying ship. The pilot punched it hard through the void as the medic worked on the woman.

“Help me keep her still!” he yelled, as the forces of no gravity and inertia fucked with pretty much everything. I clawed my way over and held her to the deck while he worked, not wanting to mess with the man’s triage.

“She’s stable… for now at least,” he said, handing her off to others to get her strapped into a chair.

“This guy’s got exposed ribs on his back,” I said, grabbing the medic’s shoulder to turn him around. He narrowed his eyes at the floating man and shook his head.

“He’s gone,” he said. I turned, seeing the captain’s open, glassy eyes looking back at me with nothing behind them.

I stood there, holding on to two seats with everything I had, just staring at the guy before Landry’s voice pulled me back.

“Party’s not over, people. We’ve got two NRC patrol vessels in the AO and I’m guessing more to come. Right now, we’re heading for the nearest planet, which might be contested territory. We have one friendly stealth ship in orbit, and they are currently supporting ground elements, so the plan is to RV with them for evac. Hold tight, and good work.”

I scanned the shuttle, seeing Valdez unconscious and strapped into a seat. His right hand was a mess of red dressings, and I looked for Fournier to fill me in on what the hell happened, only I couldn’t see him. For what it was worth, I couldn’t see the other DI and I counted maybe seventy-five percent of the marines too.

“Barton,” West said from behind me. I heard it but my name didn’t register for some reason. When she called me again, she added a slap on my shoulder that added the final puzzle piece to my focus.

“Yeah.”

“You good?” she asked. I almost smiled at her concern for me until I remembered she was my team leader, so she was checking if I was combat effective.

“I’m good,” I told her, telling myself I was because... honestly, I didn’t have a fucking clue if I was or not. I’d never been on a vessel that took the kind of damage we’d just escaped, and I’d never abandoned a ship before either. But I forced all of that down to deal with later, if we made it out of there. “Pretty intense training, huh?” I asked with a smile.

“Sure is,” she agreed with another slap aimed at my shoulder.

It never connected because an impact rocked the shuttle so hard it slammed me into the bulkhead and made me see stars.

I don’t know if I was knocked out or just knocked silly, but shit was going well and truly sideways when I got what little sense I had left. I tried to sit up but couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe either, which was more my primary concern when my brain figured it out. But I craned my neck up to see that the cause of my issues was the guy lying across my chest with a cut on his head that was leaking far too much blood to be a good thing.

I heaved him off me, calling for a medic but not hearing the sound that my voice should have made. I shook my head to try and clear my hearing but that only made the whole thing worse by aggravating the sharp pain behind my right ear.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday. Shuttlecraft Olympia One taking heavy fire. Approaching orbit in—”

Another dull reverberation shook my entire world. It made a noise so loud I felt it in my body more than I heard it in my head.

The voice I heard yelling into the comm was Landry’s, only I couldn’t make out the response he was obviously listening to as his eyes lost focus, and he pressed something to the side of his head to hear over the noise of another impact.

Sparks flew behind me as something electrical overloaded and the shuttle lurched sharply to one side, making the unconscious sailor who’d landed on me slide over the deck toward me. I cushioned his impact with my hands and felt around the deck beside me, landing on a blowout kit which would work for what I had in mind.

His head wound pissed out blood like a hose, so I tore open the packaging of the dressing with my teeth before slapping the pad on the wound and holding him to the deck to wind the bandage around his skull the best I could manage, given the circumstances.

The dead captain slammed into me with the next movement of the ship that threatened to take the sailor away from my grip unless I hung on. All three of us—one dead, one injured and one stupid—slid to the other side where we landed in a bloody heap. I heard Landry shouting again over the sound of the shuttle trying to shake itself apart, and he did not sound happy.

“I don’t give a fucking fish’s fart, you get this piece of shit below atmosphere right now, you hear me?” he growled, no doubt providing instruction and motivation to the pilot who probably picked a bad time to claim he couldn’t do something.

Landry climbed his way through the press of bodies to the back and laid eyes on me finishing up the dressing.

“You two!” he yelled, making me wonder what need he had of a wounded sailor until I realized West was getting back to her feet behind me.

“The ship can’t break off to support us and we aren’t going to make it to them. Best chance we have is to get to land and throw in with the element there until we can get an evac,” he said. His expression of being constantly fed up and a little tired was gone and in its place was a grim determination and resolve that frightened me just a little.

“What do you need?” West asked.

“I need you ready to fuckin’ rock when we hit the dirt. Got it?” Landry said, looking at us in turn until we gave him the right answer.

“Fournier, Valdez,” West barked, trying to locate the other two members of our team and finding them closer to the cockpit with the remaining marines. Fournier started to make his way toward us, but the vibration of the shuttle intensified to shake the hull so hard the sound completely canceled out inside the little ship. It wasn’t so much white noise or even just loud noise, it was more like the empty numbness of being in the void it was so bad.

The heat grew noticeably inside the shuttle and I guessed we were breaching atmosphere, which was dangerous even if the shuttle wasn’t damaged and we were all strapped in like regulations said we should be.

My next guess was that whatever NRC ship was chasing us scored one last lucky hit fired from the other side of the barrier where gases ceased to be, and that hit sent us screaming toward the dirt with a one-way ticket. Fournier wasn’t able to make it to us because of the lurching movements, and just to make matters worse, I saw Coburn slumped over a marine with blood pouring from a bad gash to his face.

“Get us closer,” Landry yelled.

“I’m trying, man! Any time you feel like taking over, that’s cool with me,” the pilot grunted back as he fought the controls. I was pretty sure we were going down, whistling in from atmosphere ready to leave a greasy scorch mark on the surface of whatever planet this was, and it dawned on me that I didn’t like that.

I didn’t like that at all.

“Coburn! Coburn, the fuck are you? Oh, hell…” Landry snarled, seeing his DI out of the game as I had.

He forced his way back to us, pushing past to slam a solid hand into an overhead bin that popped open sporting a fresh dent on the second attempt. He dragged out two packs and threw them at us, holding up a pad with coordinates written across the screen.

I shrugged into the pack and looped the straps around my thighs, careful not to snag the holstered weapon before punching the digits into the tiny computer on my right forearm. West did the same, neither of us screwing around by asking what we were doing it for, and when we both looked back up, he said words I didn’t think I’d ever forget.

“Target coordinates for our ground team. I managed to get them before the comm cut out. I need you two to get to them down there, and organize a rescue for wherever we manage to land this bucket of shit, got it?”

I nodded numbly, still wondering how in the fuck my day off turned into this shit storm, and unclipped the helmet from my belt as Landry stuffed two rifles and as many spare magazines as he could into another two empty packs. He dropped them for us to step into, to carry them on our legs just like we’d been taught to do only a couple of weeks before. The trick was to keep your legs apart so the pack didn’t fly off, not that the thought was relevant right then, but I think my brain was trying to hold onto anything it could so I didn’t release my internal monologue which comprised mainly the word fuck.

It dawned on me then why he wasn’t sending his own guys, and why he wasn’t going himself. He’d stripped his void suit and Coburn was out of it. I had no clue where Bilkins was, but I remembered that we were the only ones wearing void suits, so we were the only ones likely to survive such a long drop. Without oxygen they’d all pass out and never make the RV.

“Everybody hang onto something!” Landry yelled as he checked the tablet in his hand again before propelling both of us forward to the small door near the cockpit.

“Breach, breach, breach!” he yelled before hitting the override for the door to make it slide open, jerking into the fuselage. He slapped West on the back and she jumped with a second of hesitation, but he held me back a second and shoved something into my pack between the back of my legs. Then he slapped me and I was outside, tumbling over and over before I could level out.

Chapter 29

New Liberty Terminal, Capital City Outskirts

Komarov sat in the cabin of the lead truck as they rolled on the target location with the intention of transforming everyone there from one state to another. Specifically, transforming them from alive to dead.

He dared to believe that their intelligence was right, that the men and women of the Combined States Special Operations Group who had come to this planet with the intention of swaying the government to side with them were the same ones who had killed his brother.

Not only his brother, but an entire team of his people. One was a death sentence for them, but the other would make those deaths painful, slow and very personal.

When the hard, metallic clang sounded and the truck started to shudder, he felt an amused look play over his bearded face.

So the Americans have come to play, he thought to himself just as the truck behind theirs rolled around their left side and the windshield starburst with another bullet strike.

Blood erupted inside the cabin to sheet the crazed glass in red, which seemed black in the poor illumination of their vehicle lights. That truck, with the dead driver still hanging onto the wheel with what remained of his upper body, collided with Komarov’s truck to rock him hard in his seat.

Another tried to go around the right side before he spoke rapidly into the radio to stop them, but not before two impacts rocked the front of that truck and forced it to grind to a rapid halt also.

“Everybody stop,” Komarov ordered almost lazily, leaning forward in his seat to check if the driver of the truck on his left had been one of his own or one of the security officers on loan from their new ally. He cursed softly when he made out an NRC insignia on the right shoulder of the dead driver, annoyed that he’d be forced to go into battle with one less real soldier, and pressed to transmit again.

“Wait for them to leave that place. If they do not, we will deal with them here.”

They transferred their people and equipment from the three dead trucks to the three surviving ones, and only the planet’s security officers seemed cautious of the distant building that had spat heavy fire at them.

“They’re moving,” Federova called out in Russian, not bothering with the comm channel. Komarov looked up, raising his rifle and using the adaptive scope to zoom in on the escaping vehicle. Seeing a single large truck, he smiled, anticipating catching a few rats in a trap and exterminating them one by one.

Komarov called for his people to move, following at a distance he deemed safe from the long reach of the rifle that had crippled most of his vehicles, not that it mattered as he could easily call up more if required. The only thing annoying him was the lack of air support, but he knew he’d find a way to adapt.

The slow pursuit led them to an isolated compound which he considered to have been poorly selected. There was adequate cover to approach, and if it was him choosing a place to defend, he would’ve set up a camp on the top of the nearest high ground and forgone the comfort of walls and gates. He scoffed and spat his derision into the dust at his boots before a rolling crack high above them forced his head to jerk upward.

Seeing a burning object streaking across the dark sky, he frowned, wondering if the battle high above them had already begun, and dismissed the crashing craft as an irrelevance to his mission.

“Move in and surround the place. Shoot at anything you see moving inside,” he ordered, watching as his countrymen and -women ran to carry out his orders, and the security officers hesitated. Realizing they might not have understood his words, he made them plain in English this time.

“Go that way, find cover, and surround the compound,” he told them.

“Then what, sir?” one eager young man asked, earning a slow turn of Komarov’s head as he fixed the boy with a hard stare.

“What do you usually do with the enemy? I want you to shoot them,” he said flatly, sending them away with a wave of his left hand.

“Not you, Daniil,” he called after Federova, who was carrying a long, heavy crate in each hand. He ran over to the major after handing off his burden to another NRC soldier and waited expectantly.

“Mortars,” Komarov said, this time investing a little evil glee in the word he spoke. Federova smiled and ran to fetch the heavy weapons to start pounding their enemy into submission.

“What? You can’t do that. That’s a civilian area,” one of the security forces officers protested. Komarov looked appalled, waving a hand at Federova as if to tell him to stop, and beckoned the man toward him.

Striking fast, like seeing a bear move with the speed of a crocodile attacking, his right hand shot up and balled into a fist just before it connected under the man’s chin.

He was unconscious on his feet, but Komarov just leaned his body weight into him to pin the officer against the side of the truck before sucking in a deep, preparatory breath and wrapping his right arm around the man’s head.

With a savage jerk of his entire body that betrayed the sheer force required to break a human neck, Komarov felt more than heard the sickening crunch and pop of the bones separating before stepping clear to let the lifeless body fall to the dirt.

Looking up at Federova, who had watched the negotiations with something resembling disinterest, he gave his orders again.

“Mortars, Daniil. Mortars.”

* * *

Mark stood in the center of the open courtyard and closed his eyes to think. He ran through every conceivable way to attack their position, utilizing every tactic available whether their enemy had it at their disposal or not, and overlaid that with the mindset of the NRC who felt themselves indomitable, which often resulted in arrogant tactics.

Their concept of acceptable losses differed greatly from his own, and it left him hoping that most of those facing them were security forces with families who had to live on this planet after the dust settled.

As he was considering that, a sonic boom crackled high overhead and the accompanying streak of flaming vessel cutting through the lowest levels of the atmosphere mesmerized him for a few seconds.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” he said aloud before speaking over the comm channel to call Edwards.

“Send,” she answered hurriedly like she was distracted by multitasking.

“Check with our friends in orbit if they know what that was?” Mark asked, hoping she would understand and not require an explanation.

“Silence reports a friendly vessel came under fire from the NRC. They returned fire with one enemy ship destroyed but… stand by…”

A long pause followed, during which time Mark realized he was holding his breath. Just when he could hold it no more and blew it out, she came back over the channel.

“Silence reports multiple targets entering the system. Unknown ETA but likely to clash with our own reinforcements.”

“Can they offer us any support right now?” Mark asked, fearful of the answer being negative.

“They… I think they’re in combat. They had to show their hand and now they’ve got two ships hunting them. I… Mark, I’ve lost comm,” Edwards said.

“Shhhhhhhhhit,” he hissed to himself, forgetting he was still transmitting.

“I take that to mean we’ve lost eyes in the sky and air cover?” DeLuca asked in a tone that said he didn’t really mind either way. Mark minded very much but recognized someone playing it cool when he heard it.

“It appears that way. Eyes open, everyone, this might get a little hot.”

As if the universe heard him, as if the ironic timing of his words had invited some cosmic insult to come their way, a droning whistle filled the sky and forced his head up once again.

He didn’t see the burning ship scorching a line through the sky any longer, in fact he saw nothing. But the buzzing whistle intensified, growing louder and more insistent until his numbed mind connected the unexpected dots.

“Cover!” he yelled, sinking low and turning to power away just as the first mortar impacted a patch of open ground inside the compound and detonated hard enough to shatter the glass of their truck’s cab.

A second followed, then a third and fourth, all arriving with metronomic precision that spoke of the distant weapon being serviced with an efficiency that didn’t bode well for them.

The wall took two hits but remained standing, telling Mark that they weren’t high-explosive rounds but anti-personnel. That was bad enough, but he reassured himself it could always be worse.

“Edwards, dust off and get the bird clear!” he barked into the comm as another bomb landed to turn the truck into a deformed firepit.

“But I can—”

“Dust off, right now, that bird is our only way out of here. Head south and stay low, we’ll find a way to get to you but if it takes a hit, we’re all toast,” Mark cut her off, needing obedience and not heroics.

“DeLuca, I need everyone ready to move out of this killbox—”

Small arms fire cut off his words this time, answered by the rattling response from a suppressed weapon belonging to one of their own.

“Movement, west side,” Anders reported in an urgent, controlled tone before the gunfire started up again in bursts of three and four that the highly experienced operator sent downrange.

“I need a direction and range on that mortar,” Mark called out, cursing himself for being trapped. He wanted to run out there and flank the heavy weapon, to kill the team pinning them under cover, but he knew the levels of professionalism their enemy displayed were high because they waited to get attackers in place before the bombs started falling.

They were simultaneously kicking the hornet’s nest while keeping them hiding inside, and the outcome if they did nothing was certain. He considered using Edwards to scout for them, but putting her up high enough to be safe from anything their attackers might have on the ground could put her in the crosshairs of some far bigger guns on the far side of the atmosphere. That thought led him to curse the loss of their guardian angel hiding in the void above, but he didn’t have time to worry about the fate of the Silence when bombs were falling on them.

“I’ve got four moving north side,” Coates reported, still cold and professional but a little more excited than Anders had sounded. The report of her rifle rang out above the sound of suppressed shots in between the clockwork explosions before Bilbo came back on the channel.

“Three, north side. I think I’ve got eyes on the mortar site.”

“Bilbo, break off and come fetch this ‘twenty-six,’” DeLuca answered urgently.

“Movement east,” reported the accented voice of the other team’s sniper, Krupnick, before his weapon also began spitting rounds. Mark, half under cover and ducking each time another mortar round whistled in, looked south in the direction of the gate, which was the only one he hadn’t heard a report of movement from.

It was also the direction Edwards was in, alone, preparing to get their shuttle in the air and out of danger.

“Edwards, copy?” he tried, repeating it again with more urgency.

“Edwards, do you copy?”

“I’ll go,” Mac said simply, running low for the gate and knowing what it meant if they lost the shuttle.

Mark cursed himself again for being so wrong about the enemy, so late in acting, but he’d been caught on the back foot worse than ever before.

“Negative, maintain cover on south aspect,” he said, preparing to move alone if he had to, and he had to because without the support of the security forces who they couldn’t risk trusting with weapons, there was nobody else to support him.

His earpiece crackled with a broken signal, forcing him to duck down again at another explosion.

“Say again,” he yelled over the intensifying sounds of the firefight, pressing the bud further into his ear canal.

“—ound team…opy, ove…”

“Last unit say again,” Mark snapped, annoyed that he couldn’t make out the words and venting that stress into the comm.

“Ground team, ground team, how copy, over?”

Something about the voice, as weak and distorted as the transmission was, tickled his memory. Another mortar exploded nearby, sending piled supply crates toppling into his cover and forcing him to abandon the position.

“Last unit, identify,” DeLuca said, his voice loud and clear.

“Yeah, uh, you’ve got two of us dropping in… long story… I can see what looks like a fight going on down there, where do you need us?”

“Wait, Barton? What in the everliving fuck are you doing here?” Mac asked.

“Like I said, long story. Where do you need us?”

* * *

Edwards signed off with the Silence just as a dull explosion sounded in the distance. Two more followed before Mark called her, ordering her to take off, and she reached out to hit the ramp-close button when something cold and hard pressed into the back of her head.

She was livid for allowing herself to be snuck up on like that, knowing that none of the team would get punked like she had right then. She froze, her hands raising slightly as she bent her head forward against the force of the barrel. She thought about going for her weapon, but her body betrayed her by twitching the fingers of her right hand involuntarily to give her intentions away.

“Don’t, or it will be last thing you do,” the heavy Slavic voice said behind her. She sneered in anger, but her fast-moving brain still registered the accent as maybe eastern European as opposed to the for-real Russian she’d heard on their last mission. The difference between a Lithuanian or Ukrainian accent and a Russian one was the least relevant thing on the planet right then, but stress did strange things to the thought processes of people.

“Actually, it’d be the last thing you do—”

Her world flashed white and a pain screamed behind her eyes so bad that she didn’t know if she’d lose consciousness before or after she puked. Her head rocked on her neck from the force of the pistol whip, and she had the bizarre thought that she’d probably gotten a mild fracture from the hit.

She was useless, stunned, and she didn’t know which way was up or down for long seconds after she’d taken the blow.

Boots sounded on the deck inside her ship as more enemy walked in, and male voices spoke in a foreign language. Big hands grasped her by the arms and she was dragged from the pilot’s chair into the back of the shuttle where her weapon was stripped from her leg, and plasticuffs were zipped tight against the soft skin of her wrists making her cry out in shock and pain.

That cry prompted a derisive laugh from one of them, a man who blurred and swam in her vision so much that she couldn’t tell if it was him who’d hit her in the head or not. Her weakness, her pain, seemed to amuse them, and if that made them less fearful of her, she could use that against them when the opportunity arose.

Already her mind was set for capture and interrogation, and she had to have one eye on escape at all times.

Chapter 30

Barton

Four Thousand Feet Above IOA Safehouse

“Anything yet?” West asked. Somehow, she’d ended up above me, meaning I must’ve held the suicide dive a little longer before leveling out. Jumping from this high up meant we could traverse miles overland and would probably have to spiral down when we reached the target coordinates.

I’d been trying to raise them on the frequency Landry punched into my suit’s comm before I jumped, but I got nothing back and just kept transmitting in the blind every five hundred feet.

“Keep trying,” she said, just as a second voice came on.

“Las—nit, say agai—” came the answer. I tried but the frustrated, broken response made me think I wasn’t coming through clearly.

“Last unit, identify,” I heard clearly this time, responding off the cuff and sounding super unprofessional.

A voice came back to me that I recognized. It shocked the shit out of me, but when I took a second to consider it, I don’t know why I was really that surprised to hear Mac asking how the hell I was there. Thinking about it, me being there was way more out of left field than them being there.

I passed it off as irrelevant, considering how I was heading for the surface at terminal velocity and how they were in a damn firefight. Mark came back to me, speaking in a serious, urgent voice.

“Barton, sitrep. We’re in a compound with confirmed enemy on three sides and incoming mortars. VIPs secure here but no top cover and no exfil. Edwards is six hundred meters to our south in a shuttle and we’ve lost comms with her. Barton, we need that damn bird. Can you intercept?”

“Wait one,” I said, fighting against the rushing air to tap at the suit’s control panel and mark up my HUD. West synced hers with mine automatically—I could tell from the second icon blinking there—so we’d hopefully both end up in the same spot.

“Got it. There in a few.”

“Barton?” Mac said.

“Send it.”

“Be careful, kid. These ain’t just pay-to-play guys, intel thinks we’ve got NRC spets in the mix here.”

Fan-fucking-tastic. I thought I’d at least get to finish my damn training and qualify before I ended up facing off against some wild bear in red armor again.

“Copy all,” I said, not liking how my voice sounded. Maybe it was the lack of confidence or the obvious fear, but it didn’t send the right message, so I added a growled, “Kill!” to reassure everyone I was up for this.

“Barton, what’s happening?” West said, making me forget she could only hear one side of that last conversation.

“Ground team in a compound surrounded by possible NRC special ops and mortars. VIPs there in need of exfil and their pilot’s gone dark half a click south at the shuttle they need. That’s our new objective.”

“Roger that,” she said, grunting as she shifted position and tucked her arms and legs straight to her sides. She overtook me, cutting the dark gray sky like a damn spear as she shot past close enough to piss me off that I didn’t get a warning.

I tucked in just like she had, only with my legs braced open so I didn’t lose the bag between my thighs, firing myself like a missile at the deck thousands of feet below in a race to rescue this hot blonde pilot I knew.

“Pull at two thousand feet and drop one click south,” West ordered.

“Negative, no time,” I told her.

“Barton, this is a zero-fail mission. You’re no good to anyone with two busted ankles!”

“Negative! We need to get there—”

“Barton! Pull at two thousand an—”

“Fifteen hundred,” I interrupted, hoping she’d listen. There was a pause before she came back to me.

“Fine. Fifteen hundred feet, but we still drop a click south and advance unless you want anyone with night optics lining up on us as we drift in.”

At three thousand feet we leveled out, adopting the stable freefall position having settled into the right spot near the HUD’s blinking waypoint marker. Fighting on the ground in a void suit wasn’t something I thought I’d be doing when I’d rolled out of my rack that morning, but I put this down to a legendary level of adapt and overcome.

At fifteen hundred we pulled our chutes, hoping to be high enough that we didn’t alert any enemy on the deck to us floating in by the sharp snap of our rigs filling with air. Drifting down in lazy, silent spirals, I let the bag slip down my legs until I caught the straps with my upturned toes and bent my legs to tap the pack onto the dirt before staggering the rest of my landing and faceplanting.

I got up, fighting to get free of the rig I planned on abandoning right there because speed was more important than anything else. West landed nearby, not that I could see her that well as it was a lot darker dirtside than it had been high up, only she stayed on her feet and didn’t get a visor scraped with dust and grit.

I stayed sealed up inside the void suit because the comms were integrated and the HUD still showed up projected in front of my eyes. Taking it off would give me back better hearing but it would take away all my technology.

I finally got free of the parachute rig and dug in the pack to pull out the unfamiliar rifle along with a magazine that I clicked into place. Then I snapped back the charging handle before bringing it to my shoulder and scanning around.

West was doing the same, both of us just kneeling there and sweeping our weapon barrels around to cover a one-eighty each as our collapsed chutes flapped gently in the breeze.

“Clear,” I whispered, not that I needed to whisper but it felt right to keep quiet.

“Clear, one hundred fifteen to the shuttle,” West answered, getting up and slinging the pack over both shoulders.

I went to put mine on backward so I could dig inside for another spare mag if I needed one—when I needed one—only my hand rested on something else that wasn’t a magazine.

“Holy shit, that crazy old bastard,” I muttered to myself.

“Barton, send again,” West hissed, not catching what I’d said.

“Nothing,” I said, pulling out the thing I guessed Landry must have stuffed in my pack before he shoved me out into the upper atmosphere.

I tucked the command sergeant major’s Odin axe into my belt behind my holstered PDW and stood, adjusting the pack so it didn’t interfere with my weapon movement, before following West’s lead toward the direction of the shuttle just under a click north of our LZ.

I stopped behind cover, waiting for West to look back at me. When she didn’t, I gave a hiss over the open comm between us to make her stop and look.

I held up two fingers and pointed ahead in the dead ground ahead of her that was visible to me on the other side of the street. She nodded and ducked back slowly, signaling to me that she was going to flank to our right and that I should go up the middle. I nodded and held my ground, giving her time to get into position without rushing and making a noise that could be detected.

“Ready? Move in five, four, three…”

I waited a beat and rose up to crouch-walk forward with the unfamiliar weapon held tight into my shoulder. The two guys I watched couldn’t have been using any night optics because they would’ve seen me. I mean, they were looking right in my damn direction so why the fuck they couldn’t see me I had no idea.

They didn’t see West either, not even when she crept up behind the one furthest away from me and moved the rifle into her left hand before hooking it around the one guy’s neck and stabbing a blade into the base of his skull to make him go rigid like he’d licked his finger and stuck it in a live outlet.

The other guy spun around at the sounds he was making, which gave me the opening to rise from my shadowy cover and ram the butt of my gun into the exposed part between the top of his vest and the bottom of his helmet. He dropped to his knees and let out a little choke, so I followed up with a knee under his chin before West finished him with her knife and rolled him onto his back with a boot.

The ambient light was pretty poor but we could both tell easily enough that these two were run-of-the-mill rent-a-troops who looked the part, but were often less use than the private contractor mercs who guarded the smaller colonies.

A yell of challenge rang out, making us both dive for cover, but no gunfire followed the shout. It was in Russian, that much I knew, and my heart started to hammer in my chest so hard I could hear my own pulse.

“Polizhi vintovku,” West yelled, her own accent just as authentic as the first person to shout, and that momentary hesitation gave me the chance to spin out of cover and fire three bursts into the two silhouettes only thirty feet away.

Both of them dropped, hit by West’s fire as well as my own.

“Covering,” I whispered, watching her stalk ahead to check the two bodies lying in the wash of weak light coming from the open ramp of a shuttle. West moved forward, fast and low, to check the two soldiers we’d dropped when a roar of challenge erupted from the shuttle and a big missile of a man ran down the ramp firing a gun.

West went down, rolling to her right with a grunt of pain as our attacker fell on her.

I was just about to open fire when my finger twitched away from the trigger because West was in front of my sights. I dropped the rifle, expecting it to fall on the sling I wasn’t wearing, so the damn thing near enough tripped me as I ran. My hand dropped down to my right thigh, all muscle memory again, only before my open fingers found the grip of the sidearm on my leg. This time it struck the top of Landry’s axe.

My fingers tightened around the top of the shaft and pulled it free, tossing it straight up and releasing my grip. I gauged it perfectly and squeezed my fingers tight again around the bottom of the shaft to activate the burning plasma edge of the curved blade.

I swung that shit down like I was splitting logs, only the gap above the back plate of the guy’s red-and-black armor caught the brunt of the blow to jar my whole arm.

He screamed, twisting and writhing against the plasma edge burning a hole through the top of his spine before he started jerking like a damn fish. I tried to pull the blade free but it was stuck hard so I did the next best thing and leaned all of my weight into it to force it past the split armor.

My brain imagined the stink of burning flesh even though I couldn’t smell it through the suit, and when I finally tore the weapon free, I saw the hideous damage it had done to him.

I stood shocked for a few seconds before West grunted from underneath him and tried to worm her way out.

“Get this… fucking… meat sack off… me…” she panted, rolling free with my help and curling up with her right hand clamped over her left hip.

“Let me look, dammit,” I said when she tried to slap my hands away with her own. She took the hand clamping the wound away and immediately a spurt of hot, red blood welled up where her suit was torn.

“It’s… a through… a through-and-through,” she gasped, eyes squeezed shut against the pain. I reached for a pouch that wasn’t there, cursing muscle memory again because the medkit I carried on my regular gear just wasn’t there, because I was fighting the NRC on a planet I didn’t even know existed until minutes ago, having parachuted into a warzone wearing a damn void suit.

“Come on, get up,” I said, ignoring her cries of pain as I hauled her to her feet to get her inside the shuttle where I thought there had to be a well-equipped medical case if I was a betting man.

I half carried her on my right side with the axe in my left hand, still bearing the burned remnants of some guy’s blood and whatever the hell else on the blade. I recognized the woman slumped in one of the seats in the back by the color of her hair, only that shock of bright blonde was disheveled and marred by blood matted down the right side.

She looked up, hands behind her back in a way that looked like she’d been tied up, and the shock and realization dawning on her face would’ve been comical under different circumstances.

“Captain Edwards, this is Captain West. She needs your help,” I said, sounding so damn calm it freaked me out a little. I’d just parachuted into a damn firefight and killed a few people, but somehow that made me show better manners than I usually did.

Adrenaline did some weird stuff to my head, I tell ya.

Edwards turned her upper body, leaning far to one side to show me the zip ties clamping her wrists together. I looked down and told her to hold still, activating the plasma burn on the axe and touching it really carefully against the plastic trying not to scorch her skin. The cuffs gave way the second the edge touched them, and I stopped squeezing to kill the power.

She staggered to her feet using her hands to support her as she reached up unsteadily for a box on the bulkhead.

“Are you okay? You’re hurt,” I said, shutting my mouth when she let out an angry hiss. I guessed that one could wait, especially given how West was just groaning and barely conscious when I laid her down to start cutting away the void suit with the axe.

“Where the hell’d you get that?” West muttered. I ignored her, not sure how she’d take the news that it was Landry’s, in case that competitive streak in her turned jealous sibling or something.

Edwards crawled over, blood dripping down one side of her face as she pushed a medkit along the deck at me and lay down flat.

“Fuck, not you too?” I growled, standing to hit the ramp close button because I couldn’t work on two injured people and watch our backs for more NRC bastards.

I slapped wound dressings on the entry and exit wounds just above West’s left hip, finding another through-and-through to the meat of her upper left arm which took another two dressings before I lifted her into a seat and strapped her in just in case, then hit her with a syrette of synthesized painkillers and turned my attention to Edwards.

She’d taken a crack to the dome that looked nasty, but then head wounds always looked like a fucking murder scene and were usually the result of a small cut. Capillary bleeding had a habit of doing that.

I used another wound dressing and wrapped the bandage around her head until she looked like a mummy before strapping her in beside West and standing up.

I was pissing sweat inside the void suit like a fat kid at a drive-thru, so I pulled down a few packs from the storage bins and rummaged around until I found an armor suit. Stripping off and putting it on, clipping the plates into place over the top as fast as I could, I switched on the comm and tapped in the six-digit code I’d been given on the last mission.

To my surprise, I heard the sounds of gunfire and names I didn’t recognize calling each other until I heard Mark’s voice.

“Coates! You got a bead on that damn mortar yet?” he asked, sounding like he was having as bad a day as everyone else was.

“Almost got it,” she answered distantly before a dull explosion came over the comm, then a second later through the hull even more muted.

“Mark, Barton, you copy?”

“Barton, what’s happening? Have you got Edwards?”

“Affirmative. I’ve got her and one other wounded but stable. Five enemy down,” I responded. Part of me hoped he’d order me to stand my ground, to protect the wounded and the shuttle, but I knew that was the part of me inside that shied away from a fight. The sensible part.

We all had it, at least those of us who weren’t psychopathic or sociopathic, and I knew it was fear leading me by the hand, just hoping I’d be justified in sitting out the rest of the fight.

“Can you secure the craft and get back to the compound?” he asked, probably forgetting I’d never even been there in the first place. I took a breath even though I knew the answer.

“Affirmative, what do you need?”

Chapter 31

Odin Compound

Bilbo dropped off the roof without bothering to take the ladder, jumping down ten feet to roll back to his boots and run for the external stairs. DeLuca met him halfway there, struggling under the weight of the massive anti-material rifle and a case of ammunition for it to hand it over wordlessly.

Bilbo took it, turning away and making it three whole paces before a bright flash erupted and sent him flying through the air to land flat on his face minus the weapon and its payload.

Ears shrieking a high-pitched whine, he staggered to his feet and rested a hand against the blackened whitewash of the wall, only for his hand to slide through a hot, greasy mess smeared over it.

Turning back with a stiff neck to see if DeLuca was okay, he realized too late what his hand had slipped in.

“Bilbo, where’s that twenty-six?” Coates called out, only when her words came to him he had trouble hearing them at first. She repeated the question he hadn’t answered, and that time he struggled to comprehend how the words related to him.

He stared back between the charred mess of disintegrated body that had been his team leader, his friend, and the man he’d served alongside for the last four years. He looked to the ladder, which something in the back of his mind told him he needed to climb.

He picked up the big rifle by the barrel, slick hands losing grip on his first two attempts, before he growled a noise of impotent rage and heaved it up.

“Here! Take it!” he yelled up, arms straining as he struggled to hold the weight of it up. Coates appeared on the ledge above him and dropped flat to reach an arm down for the gun before hauling it up. Bilbo turned, his back and legs burning and stinging with pain like he’d never known before, and he grabbed the handle of the ammo case before grinding his teeth again in anticipation of the effort. He heaved the weight of it through the air to send it flying up onto the flat roof where it landed with a thud almost as loud as the mortar pinning them down.

“Get the bastards,” he said, his lips quivering uncontrollably and his voice faltering to a whisper. “Get… get the bast—”

Bilbo slumped against the wall, his back and legs gushing blood freely from the shrapnel wounds caused by the exploded mortar shell that had taken his friend, and he sat there with glassy eyes to watch the rest of the battle, with one shivering hand gripped around the shaft of his axe.

* * *

“Coates, talk to me,” Mark said over the sound of gunfire as he traded rounds with a red-armored figure in good cover.

“Setting up. DeLuca bought it with that last mortar round, and Bilbo’s not responding. Stand by.”

The words rocked Mark. Even though he knew neither man personally, they were still brothers, and their loss hit him hard.

She worked fast, selecting the preloaded clip of five twenty-five-millimeter, depleted uranium, sabot rounds tipped red for incendiary. She couldn’t see well enough in the poor light to know they were incendiaries, but given how the case was only loaded with those rounds or the black-tipped high-explosive option, she knew she could make either work.

She set out the gas bipod legs on the long barrel beside her Mk20 and settled into position with her hips flat on the roof and her right leg cocked up like she was partway through a crawl.

Her right hand slipped around the grip and trigger guard while her left braced horizontally to support her right wrist and give her somewhere to rest her chin, so she didn’t give herself whiplash firing the massive gun.

Her position was individual, and it wasn’t like firing a weapon at all but more operating an artillery piece from the rear of it.

She took aim, waiting to gauge the timing right, because the mortar was set up in a patch of dead ground out of sight. She wasn’t aiming to hit the mortar or the team firing it. Instead, she was waiting for what she’d seen before.

Five more rounds whistled in before her chance came, each of them only missing her exposed position out of sheer luck. When the man carrying another crate of bombs staggered over the dust to drop down into the depression with the precious reloads that were keeping her people pinned down, she readied herself to fire.

“Coates! You got a bead on that damn mortar yet?”

“Almost got it… fuck you and your grid square, you motherfu—” She pulled the trigger, giving the running man some lead and aiming to hit the crate dead center and never finding out if her aim was true. She knew it was true enough, because the superheated projectile, effectively a tiny replica of tank ordnance, broke away from the sabot casing just prior to impact and sent the slug burning into the bombs at about eighteen hundred degrees and thirty-five hundred feet per second.

The blossoming detonation was instant and satisfying, scorching the ground for thirty meters in all directions with burning debris and chemical fire to cook off any surviving munitions there and create a dozen smaller explosions as the night sky lit up.

She opened her mouth to report, but Mark was talking to Barton.

That damn cockroach! How in the shit did he get here? she thought to herself, unable to come up with any rational explanation for his unexpected arrival.

She heard Mark calling him to them, heard his eager beaver little shit response like he was enjoying himself, then decided she’d spent enough time killing from a distance because the fight was about to go kinetic.

* * *

Far above them, fighting their own desperate battle over much more significant distances, the Silence gave up stealth for speed as they tried to outmaneuver the two fast patrol ships.

The tech of the stealth boat was old but solid, only she had the misfortune to be matched against two of the most recent iterations of the NRC’s system patrol vessel, the Orel class, and they had vastly superior sensor arrays and viciously uprated close-in weapon systems acting as point defense cannons. If the battle had to be likened to one on old Earth, it was as though two state-of-the-art destroyers were chasing down a lone submarine.

At the distances the two ships were passing, they were using the PDCs as offensive weapons, which left the Silence outgunned and outpaced.

“XO, any damn word on my reinforcements?” Captain Stahl asked Jenner.

“Negative, got readings on the long-range but unsure if they’re ours yet.”

“Understood. Helm? Bring us about, evasive pattern delta and take us directly under that lead ship. Weaps? Prepare ventral and dorsal TKMs. Mid yield, lateral spread, ready on my mark.”

He waited patiently as his ship vibrated under the impacts and near misses of enemy shots, his face a stoic mask of resolve as they came about and jinked in all directions.

He watched the readouts and displays, gauging his moment just right before he called the order to fire.

Six tungsten balls intended for use against surface targets thumped out of their tubes in sequence, rapidly accelerated by the electromagnetic launchers to impossible velocities.

Of those six, four connected with the underside of the enemy ship. Of those four, only one penetrated, courtesy of an unexpected design flaw where two sections met and the hull was vulnerable to a kinetic attack at close range. That ball of metal, carrying with it all the inertia and destructive power of a small meteor, tore through vital systems to kill their life support and disrupt the power to most of their weapon systems, to leave them crippled in the void above the planet.

“What’s left in the toolbox, weaps?” Stahl asked the ensign manning the weapons station, not celebrating their successful attack because the job was far from done.

“Eight missiles and two torpedoes, sir.”

“TKMs?” the captain asked, daring to hope that they could repeat their good luck if the remaining ship took a fast and close attack approach again.

“Six more, mainly high yield.”

Stahl hoped high yield would get the job done at close range as the larger munitions took longer to accelerate to killing velocity.

“Incoming weapon signatures. Wide-spread missiles!” came the shout from behind him.

“Where did they come from, Lieutenant?”

“Origin appears to be the incoming signatures… stand by… confirmed NRC ships inbound.”

“How many?” Stahl asked calmly, prompting a pause as the officer checked and rechecked the information.

“Fourteen, Captain.”

“Weapons, prepare two dorsal torpedoes on shark attack protocol and give me four missiles right down the throat of the pursuit ship,” Stahl said. His words, despite the grimness of the situation, gave the ensign cause to smirk. A shark attack protocol was stealth boat slang for a killer blow that came from the murky depths to unleash savage energy vertically into the target, just like a shark taking a seal coming into shore.

“Programmed and ready, sir.”

“Fire torpedoes,” Stahl ordered, watching the sensor display of their ordnance as he gauged the timing right so that the ship was focused on the incoming missiles and not the two killers looping underneath—not that “underneath” was a technical term in void combat, but old Earth habits were hard to shake.

“Fire missiles!”

“Firing,” the ensign responded coolly, pausing just a beat before he gave the command because he dared to know his craft better than others, because he was the man in the hot seat with all the information at hand.

He staggered the firing to keep the enemy concentrated on easy missile kill after easy kill, timing it to perfection so that by the time the second torpedo detonated inside the outer hull of the patrol ship, it created enough disruption that the final missile took out the bridge of the vessel in a split second of superheated metal and fire.

“She’s going down,” came the report from the sensor station.

“Get us out of here, all ahead for orbit. Aft PDCs on automatic—”

“Sir, aft defense cannons are bingo on ammo,” the weapons ensign reported, deflating his mood after killing two of the enemy ships. Stahl shifted in his chair but said nothing, just gave a nod to say that his other orders still stood.

In a desperate sprint to reach orbit and confuse the incoming missiles, Stahl wasn’t the only one to know they’d played almost every card they had.

“Captain, I’m reading a second wave of signatures incoming…”

“Be specific, Lieutenant. A second wave of enemy missiles or a second wave of enemy ships?” Stahl asked, wondering if he’d be forced to give the order for his crew to abandon ship in the life rafts.

“Ships, sir… stand by one…”

Stahl fought the urge to demand a response and rush her, fought the urge to stand and check the reading for himself, but he forced his face and body to radiate calm.

“They’re ours! Allied signatures entering the battle space!”

“Maintain course and heading; we still have a missile problem to deal with,” Stahl said, daring to hope they might make it out after all.

“Actually, Captain, I don’t think we do… missiles are maintaining steady course and haven’t corrected to track our adjustment,” the lieutenant said, throwing accelerant on that smoldering fire of hope the captain was sitting on.

“Course change, oblique angle to missile track,” he ordered, waiting as the helmsman announced their bearing and speed.

Holding his breath, Stahl watched as the missiles failed to track them. His brain threw a dozen possibilities at him for the reasons why the enemy didn’t fire smart munitions to track them, but the most obvious explanation was that the incoming ordnance lacked the sensor capability to target them now that their hull was no longer being painted by the bombardment of the patrol ships that had tumbled dead into the void.

“Bring us about, three-quarter speed,” Stahl ordered, calling out a heading that would take them sailing right back toward the enemy.

* * *

Timing was everything. So often after the fact, people were inclined to accept praise for their tactical genius that was little more than good luck. The allied flotilla arrived right when they needed to, only that wasn’t by design. It was the culmination of various factors, all of which added up to just the right number to save the Silence from their fate and surprise the NRC fleet who weren’t paying enough attention to their rear.

The allied flotilla opened up with everything they had, thumping missiles and torpedoes out into the void in wave after wave of potential destruction that shocked and distracted the enemy.

At the center of that flotilla on the bridge of the supercarrier Saratoga, Admiral Crossley gave the orders to deploy a weapon that only a handful of personnel knew about.

A converted stealth boat, one so far behind the technology curve that a retrofit simply wouldn’t bring it up to scratch, was docked to the underside of the massive vessel.

It was both too small and too slow to be of any use in a real fight against the recent advances made by both the Russian Confederacy and the British Empire, but that wasn’t to say it was devoid of all use.

Deployed as soon as they entered range, the stripped-out tub, code named “M-339” but known by those who developed it as “the bug zapper,” slid silently toward the enemy until the automated systems onboard triggered detonation by proximity.

The resulting electromagnetic pulse radiated out almost a hundred and forty kilometers, but within that sphere of influence were four ships which had fired long-range missiles at their lone stealth vessel far beyond the reach of their own weapons. That guidance command signal was fried, along with every other electrical system onboard the enemy ships, and eight of the ten vessels inside the affected area simply expired to float and tumble out of formation.

Tightening his mouth in a grim line of satisfaction, Crossley gave the orders to unleash everything they had on the remaining enemy.

“It worked!” his executive officer said.

“It worked once,” Crossley told him sternly. “Within a month every ship in the fight will have an upgraded faraday cage constructed around key systems and they’ll approach every fight with screening flak. This was a one-shot deal, XO, and we’ve still got work to do.”

“Sir, I’ve got weapons signatures coming from the planet’s horizon,” an officer called out.

“Be specific,” Crossley responded, unknowingly echoing the captain of the stealth boat that had narrowly escaped destruction far ahead of them.

The supercarrier was equipped with a sensor suite powered by hardware the size of a patrol vessel, and as such its reach was much further than anything else in the flotilla.

“It’s the system defense platform. They’re powering up weapons and… confirmed fire, confirmed fire! Incoming ordnance from the platform.”

Crossley sat back in his command chair, exuding calm as befitted his rank and position. He gave no orders in response, because there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it from where they were. The flotilla would just have to suck it up, come what may.

He keyed a memorized code into the screen beside his chair, activating a preprogrammed encrypted comm channel.

“Yeah?” came the gruff response.

“Activate,” Crossley said simply, as if giving a voice command to a computer program.

“You paying the overtime?” the voice demanded, sounding angry.

“Overtime is paid at double,” Crossley answered, cutting the comm.

His odd call had earned the attention of a few crew members on his bridge, but Crossley ignored the looks he got with deliberate care.

Rank was information, he believed. The higher up a person got in whatever their chosen profession was, the more information they had. There was a reason that worker on the factory floor and grunts on the front line felt as though they had no control over their destiny, and it was because they didn’t.

Decisions were made so many levels above them that they never even heard of the person giving the orders that filtered down to them, because they didn’t need to know.

The crew didn’t know about the inserted asset on the orbital weapons platform. In fact only five people in his entire flotilla knew about the operator stationed there months prior as an engineer, and of those five only two of them had the authority to give the correct sequence of code words to turn that engineer into a saboteur.

Chapter 32

New Liberty Terminal

Orbital Weapons Platform

“What was that?” the engineer beside the man who went by the name of Kurt asked. In response, as befitted his adopted manner, Kurt gave a grunt which was inaudible over the hum and whine of the machinery. He hadn’t heard a radio transmission, but he’d also been working on a piece of loud machinery at the time.

The others had grown accustomed to his general poor attitude toward others over the last few months, and he took no more offense than usual at the man’s intentional ignorance.

He wasn’t really bothered about who the call was from or what it was about, but the mention of the word “overtime” grabbed his interest and held it. The postings to the orbital defense platform lasted for six months at a time, and the facilities onboard were so basic that any opportunity to work for extra pay was just as boring as sitting and doing the same things in their off hours, so it paid to work.

Being ignored pissed the other engineer off, but it was so in character that he paid it no mind and wandered away to do his own work.

Kurt, a man of average build and height who was somewhere between thirty and fifty depending on what light a person viewed him in, was almost instantly forgettable in his appearance.

The men and women in his profession—that of covert-embedded operations—made a skill of their natural ability to be unremarkable, but where Kurt differed from the norm was in his attitude.

He always found the work involved in maintaining a cover story to be tedious, so he worked around the problem by being an anti-social asshole wherever he went. As far as his usual demeanor went, it wasn’t that much of a stretch, but he found the safest way to keep his cover story intact was not to engage with anyone more than he absolutely had to.

He’d been careful to walk the line, never going so far as to be remembered for it in any great detail, and more than once he’d been punched in the face for it, but he’d never fought back.

If he had, everyone would have remembered him.

Consistency was the key, he knew, and he was consistently an ignorant, rude jerk to everyone he worked with up to the point of him being unemployable as a result.

His work was what marked him out, because prior to embarking on the long career that had seen him pass through the process at Hades on more than one occasion, he had been a skilled Combined States Navy systems engineer simply bored with his mundane existence.

That boredom, that inability to settle, had seen him live out of a bag for years. Always happy to be on the move, his high tolerance for pain and his inhuman levels of resilience had led him to apply for special operations where he passed the selection phase with ease. Only he found that passing the tests didn’t give him what he wanted because he still didn’t fit in.

Leaving the senior drill instructor’s office after a reassuring talk about how he was capable, but that Odin just wasn’t the right fit for him, he’d been approached leaving the planet on the empty transport utterly devoid of any other passenger. That approach had been from a man wearing plain clothing, as if it was a uniform all of its own.

Rumors of the Intelligence Operations Activity’s shady black ops were interwoven through military culture like a disease, but in that moment when he suspected he was looking at one of them, he knew it to be true.

The IOA was an intelligence gathering and information analysis department of the government, and as such they had no actual soldiers of their own. That was bullshit, clearly, because he was looking right at one on that transport.

“Asshole too good to talk to the likes of us,” the other engineer muttered to himself, unaware that the man he was complaining about had walked up behind him so close that the first sign of his presence was the hot breath on the man’s exposed neck.

Tensing up to spin around and issue a challenge, he was unable to form any words as the multitool they all carried to open the various panels and conduits on the station was stabbed through his neck from the side. A powerful hand clamped over his mouth to prevent even the weak choking sounds from escaping, completing the ambush on the unsuspecting man to end him in a few seconds.

Kurt dragged his body to the nearest crawl space and shoved him inside, bending his floppy legs at awkward angles to make him fit before stripping off the tool vest he wore to reveal the physique most people put down to an obsessive man having too much downtime and a gym on hand.

There were sixteen other people onboard, taking into account the one he’d just killed, and with little else to do for months than plan the myriad ways he could kill all of them and take control of the station, Kurt ran through all the options and settled on three plans in descending order.

A, B, and C.

Plan A was his favorite, committed solely to memory with no record of any part of any plan written anywhere, and as the platform’s emergency lights flashed red in anticipation of firing another barrage, he walked fast for the control panel to temporarily isolate all power—primary and secondary—and kill the launchers.

He’d been unable to do anything so obvious as to plant remote explosives anywhere because the systems were so thoroughly checked every few days out of having too little work to do that discovery would have been imminent.

Unlocking a terminal with the credentials of the man he had just killed—one of ten others he’d managed to oversee and memorize since he’d been posted there—he programmed the override in time to prevent the station from shaking under the release of the next wave of munitions.

The radio went crazy, with five people shouting all at once until a silence held sway long enough for one person to believe their words were the most important.

“We’ve lost all power to the launchers,” came the annoyingly crisp voice of a man who had been an officer in the air force of Kurt’s home country. The statement was a waste of words in Kurt’s opinion, unless the next ones he came out with were the solution to the problem he’d just announced.

He said nothing more, just angrily presented the problem and waited for someone else to fix it.

“This is Kurt. I’m just walking into the main coupler assembly… All the hardware looks okay, are you sure it’s a power problem? Have you tried the secondary?”

“Of course I’ve tried the fucking secondary, you moron!” came the almost desperate response. Kurt smiled, enjoying the part of his job where he got to annoy people. The man’s anger was playing right into the path of plan A, and he started to speak into the radio to spur the others onboard along with him.

“Must be a software issue, and I can’t fix that from down he—”

“I’m in the logs. Looks like Rod Hill just activated a kill program into the power scheduling system,” someone else interrupted. Kurt smiled again and feigned anger and confusion.

“Hill? I just saw him on my way here,” he transmitted, imagining the others’ brains starting to spin up until they reached critical mass and could connect the imaginary dots he’d just drawn.

“Shit, we need to find that son of a bitch right now,” someone else said.

“He was headed for B-Fourteen. That’s a dead end,” Kurt said, orchestrating the entire show with ease.

“Okay, some of you go after him. Detain that asshole until we can get someone up here to interrogate him, but in the meantime, I need power restored right fucking now!” the station boss said, again just expecting magic to happen without direction.

“I can probably undo it, but I need you to unlock the restricted access mainframe so I can access the grid direct and wipe whatever he put in there,” Kurt said, gesturing with his hands in anticipation of the correct answer coming back to him.

“Fine… just… don’t screw anything else up while you’re at it,” the former air force officer said, knowing he needed it done but unwilling to climb down the six levels between his command suite and the oily crawlspace where the direct access to that specific system was.

“I’m on it,” Kurt said, careful to still sound grumpy about having to interact with anyone. He opened an access panel and crawled inside, flipping a switch to illuminate a panel where he plugged a remote touchpad in and accessed the formerly restricted mainframe access.

The reason he’d done it that way, the reason why plan A was so poetic, was because the station chief and his four buddies who never got their hands dirty had just effectively killed themselves.

With the necessary override in place to restore power, Kurt also had access to every other station system with total command authority.

The first thing he did was to change the numerical access sequence, inputting an offensively simple 1-2-3-4 code and repeating it when the system demanded he confirm the new digits.

The second thing he did was to activate a control room lockdown via the security protocols for a boarding breach. Following that, it was a simple thing to deactivate all verbal and visual warnings and manually trigger the fire warning in that same room, allowing the automated systems to vent the atmosphere and kill the imaginary fire.

Nothing came over the radio, as the dead men simply had no warning of what would happen, until the rush of air and their sudden inability to breathe or talk was replaced by their very rapid deaths.

Now, with total control of the station which had no way of firing anything else at the allied flotilla, he disconnected the terminal but left a rebroadcaster in place so he could operate the stations systems like the omniscient being he felt like in that moment.

Crawling back out, he pocketed the touchpad and walked toward the section where he had reported the fictitious saboteur’s last known position.

“We’re at B-Fourteen. Going inside now,” his radio said, transmitting all of the nervous apprehension the speaker felt. Kurt smiled, recognizing the voice as belonging to the man who spoke the loudest and the longest about the action he’d seen during his time as a private enterprise soldier.

Kurt found men like him amusing, but he also pitied them. The fact that they needed to talk so much about the imaginary things they’d done and the imaginary places they’d been only to get attention prompted differing feelings in him.

Rounding a section to see the last man creeping down the steps of the open hatch in search of Hill, he pulled his radio off his belt to find out some relevant intelligence.

“How many you got? This guy could be armed?”

“Hah! Asshole better be armed against the six of us,” the answer came.

Six down, five to go.

Kurt smiled again, calmly walking up to the hatch and shutting it before tapping another command to vent that section of atmosphere using the same fire suppression system overrides as before.

Plan A was going well, right up until the moment he turned and saw the station’s youngest worker staring aghast at him.

He had a radio in his left hand and a foot and a half of neosteel in the form of a wrench in his right, only he didn’t make a move to use either.

“What are you doing?” he asked, unable to comprehend the danger he was in.

“Making sure he doesn’t get out. We don’t know what he’s up to,” Kurt answered, doing a good job at sounding breathless and frightened.

The young man nodded, raising his radio to his mouth before Kurt stopped him by holding out a hand, then raising a finger to his lips.

“He’s got a radio too, you think of that?”

The other man hesitated, his youthful ignorance written all over his face, but he accepted the logic because it was simple.

“I’m going to help,” he said bravely, stepping past Kurt and spinning the handle of the hatch to go inside.

Only the handle didn’t move. None of the hatches down in the engineering levels were electronically controlled, as they were on the warhead storage, firing platform, and control room levels, so when the handle didn’t budge the kid looked confused at first.

Then his mind began working, and he knew that the only way the hatch would behave that way was if the pressure on the other side was wrong.

“Something wrong?” Kurt asked from behind him, only the tone of his voice was wrong. It was reluctant and bad tempered as it usually was, but instead it had taken on a cold professionalism. The young man tightened his grip on the wrench and turned fast, swinging it in a vicious arc that would’ve cracked the skull of any man in two, only Kurt wasn’t there.

He’d seen the blow coming a mile away, finding it a simple thing to step back long before he’d witness the slight crouch in posture, the tightening of the shoulder muscles, and heard the sharp intake of breath in anticipation of his opponent needing the extra oxygen.

The blow sailed past, harder than he’d expected and impressing him a little, but that wasn’t as impressive as how fast the kid had recovered to swing it at him again with an exaggerated step forward.

Kurt stayed calm, stepping into the blow side-on to wrap his left hand around the wrist holding the wrench and drive the sharp point of his elbow into the young man’s exposed throat.

In the action movies the other engineers insisted on watching over and over, this would be the part where the assailant stepped back to admire his handiwork as the poor man choked and gagged to try and say something poignant before he died.

But this wasn’t an action movie, and Kurt didn’t take any chances.

Extending his right arm to cup the back of his head, Kurt kept hold of the wrench hand just in case and simultaneously drew down the kid’s skull for his face to meet the upcoming knee.

The bones of the face were tough things to break, unless you caught them with the correct application of pressure in just the right way.

He felt his knee connect with the eye socket, breaking it and the nose easily. The legs of the body he held—because he no longer associated it with an innocent human being—went slack. and he released his grip to let it flop to the deck. Another stamp with the heavy heel of his boot resulted in a crunch that ended the man’s silent suffering.

Stepping back and taking a few deep breaths to make it sound like he was hyperventilating, Kurt lifted the radio with a shaking hand to transmit in a panic.

“Fuck, anyone, the kid’s dead. I found him by B-Fourteen. Anyone?”

Silence.

“Control room, you copy?”

Silence again.

“Guys inside Fourteen, you copy?”

Nothing.

“Fuck, Kurt? Where are you? We’ll come to you,” a man said.

“I’m… I’m by the hatch to B-Fourteen… how many you got?”

“Me, Gomez and Clarke, coming up from—”

A yell from behind killed the rest of the transmission, and helpfully telegraphed the attack that Kurt hadn’t seen coming.

He ducked the thermite lance that whistled as it swung through the air to clang against the conduit pipe beside his head. The lance bent slightly, which was no easy thing given how hard they were, and that told him that the last remaining engineer wasn’t playing.

His brain cycled the information fast, adding up those he’d killed and those he knew were on their way, boiling down the list of potential enemies to just a few with the capability for such strength and violence.

He rolled out of range of another attack, rising to his feet with an ease confirming that he was another person entirely to the one they thought they knew.

He’d always stomped around the station heavy-footed and wearing a scowl, but as he emerged from his lithe evasion, he wore an amused expression and moved like a fighter.

The man, one of the other former military personnel assigned to the station, was the one he’d assumed was a coward given how he liked to talk about things he didn’t know firsthand. His actions now told Kurt that the assessment of the man was incorrect.

He swung the lance again, fumbling at the controls to ignite the tip, which forced Kurt to accelerate proceedings before he managed it and changed the game in a bad way.

“You motherfucker,” the man snarled, swinging again to drive Kurt back where he tripped on the outstretched arm of the kid’s body. He went with it, falling down and scrambling for purchase on the dropped wrench. Standing up, he spun the wrench in his hand like it was a dagger and held the length of it along his right forearm.

“You motherfucker,” the man snarled again, lunging forward with the lance as if he was taking the name of it literally, and tried to joust him along the walkway.

Kurt stepped forward, letting the blow come so he could deflect it with the wrench and slip past the reach it provided. Once inside arm’s length he lashed out, striking with hands, elbows, knees, and feet to destroy the man piece by piece.

Each blow drove him back further until his back slammed into a metal frame, and when the momentum of his body reversed, Kurt sank low and drove his right forearm savagely into the man’s throat to crumple him like a bag of laundry.

Kurt stood over the man and breathed hard to replenish the oxygen he’d expended. When he’d caught enough of his breath, he dragged the man up by his arm and wrapped it around the neck before leaning all of his body weight through it via his knee. Waiting as long as he dared to make sure the man was gone, he knew he’d overreached because the sound of boots hammering on the metal deck started to sound in the distance.

Dropping the dead man, he looked around, snatching up the dropped wrench and rubbing his hands in the blood pooled on the face of the youngest crew member, smearing some on the tool and the rest on the back of his head.

He lay flat on the deck just in time for the three surviving station crew to round the corner and see the carnage.

Kurt groaned, rolling over and clutching the back of his skull before looking horrified at the blood covering his hands.

“Kurt? Kurt, you okay, buddy?” one asked, dropping something metal beside him and kneeling down to check his fake injuries.

“Clocked me… from behind… fuckin’ prick…” Kurt gasped, looking in horror on the bodies of the other two men.

His acting skills were as honed as his fighting abilities, given that his deployments required him to become another person entirely. The depth of the deception extended to himself, and after each mission “Kurt” would have to reestablish his true identity or else he’d become lost.

“Both dead,” another said, stooping over the body of the man Kurt had strangled to death only moments ago and pressing two fingers to his neck.

“Hatch is jammed,” another said.

“The kid… he couldn’t open it. I think the… I think the atmo’s vented,” Kurt gasped, eyes screwing shut from the imaginary pain in his head.

“Son of a bitch, when I find him I’m gonna—”

“Weapons,” Kurt mumbled.

“What?”

“We need weapons. You… you saw what he did here,” Kurt answered, struggling to his feet and bending at the waist to steady himself against the bulkhead.

“The weapons locker’s up on the command deck and we can’t access it,” the man who was helping steady Kurt explained.

“Station chief gave me access when he unlocked the system,” Kurt answered, eyes still closed in fake agony but his chest heaving for real. He waited, imagining the glances the three men were exchanging and knowing before any of them spoke that the chance to get their hands on weapons was too appealing to let go.

“Okay, we go. Stick together,” the emerging leader of the survivors said, hauling Kurt up, who managed to feign just enough recovery to be taken with them and not get left behind, but not enough that it would seem miraculous.

Climbing the ladders up six levels, with each movement the others made laced with fear of an intruder that was climbing with them, took a long time.

“Can’t be a coincidence, right? We get a fire mission, then thirty seconds later Hill goes fuckin’ rogue?” one of them whispered, stating the obvious conclusion that had taken him far too long to reach.

Kurt said nothing, simply grunted and groaned at the appropriate times to keep up the pretense of having been knocked out so recently. He staggered when they reached the right level, allowing the others to help him forward when they reached the sealed locker outside the command suite.

“We arm up, then we go back down and hunt the bastard,” one said, sounding too eager for the action he’d viewed in so many screen performances.

Kurt reached up with shaking, unsteady fingers and tapped in the access code to unlock their small armory, glancing left and right surreptitiously before he unlocked it.

He was mentally planning the order in which he had to drop the last three men so none of them could bring a makeshift weapon to bear on him, but before that his hands had to move as fast as they ever had before to betray not only his training, but the savagery and skill that made him perfect for black ops.

Opening the locker, he felt the three men move closer, but he dropped the confused act and ramped up the speed of his hands to near a blur as they shot forward together.

His left hand grasped the micro reactor, fingers gripping it in just the right way to be able to slide it home unhindered as his right took the civilian model pistol from the rack.

The reactor clicked home before anyone else knew what was happening, and the loaded magazine was in his left hand and moving toward the weapon before the scene had begun to make sense to the other three.

A yelp of surprise came from behind him, reacting faster than he’d hoped for, and as he was still loading the weapon, he drove his body straight back by pushing off the wall with his right foot.

After slamming into the man behind, Kurt spun, the gun clicking as a round was chambered, and drilled two shots into the center of the chest of the man to his left. He pushed off the one he’d struck with his body, ducking to fire one round into his abdomen before standing tall and putting another into his face. Leaning away to his right he aimed the pistol under his left arm and fired twice, hitting the surviving man center mass for him to drop with a clang at Kurt’s feet.

Three more shots, controlled and callous, made sure that they wouldn’t get up again, as Kurt strolled toward the control room door as if he hadn’t just executed three men in less than three seconds.

Using the tablet to override the internal controls, he pumped atmosphere back into the suite and unlocked the doors to walk inside.

Pulling the former station chief out of the command chair, he plugged in the encrypted communications device he’d kept on his person every day since he got there, and made a call.

Chapter 33

Barton

New Liberty Capital Outskirts

I ran, feeling alone and vulnerable and like a damn fraud.

Everything I’d been through since this whole thing began—and by that I mean since my sorry ass woke up from jump sleep to drop onto planet Whateverthefuck—and I still didn’t feel worthy of wearing the armor or carrying the axe on my back.

Mark had sounded desperate when he’d given me the orders, and the term “self-rescue” kept repeating itself over and over in my mind.

Prepare to self-rescue, like that was even a fucking thing. What that meant was that you were on your own, so you did whatever the fuck you had to do and got it done or died trying. Self-rescue was just invented terminology to say your ass was on its own.

Well, my guys weren’t going to be able to self-rescue, and as much of a dick as I felt saying it, it was down to me to tip the scales.

No. Fucking. Pressure.

If the click between our LZ and the shuttle seemed like a ten-miler, then the half click from the shuttle to the compound felt like a full marathon. The rhythmic crump of mortars had stopped after Coates did whatever she did, and I guessed that was pretty savage, given how I could see flames and smell burning chemicals, but the chatter of gunfire still told a story.

I still carried the captured NRC rifle because there weren’t any of ours on the shuttle and I knew for a fact that the one I’d jumped with worked.

I’d ditched the pack and wedged the spare mags into the carrier on the armor, which was a little loose around the shoulders after I’d lost some bulk during selection, in spite of eating about six thousand calories a day. I fitted the axe to the carrier on the back, which told me that the armor I was borrowing belonged to either Mac or Anders, because Mark preferred to wear his own on his belt.

When I was close enough to hear the whine of a ricochet, I dropped into cover and called up.

“Visual on south gate,” I reported.

“Barton, move east. I’ve got two in cover giving me an ass-load of shit,” Mac answered with a grunt as the scrapes and click of a magazine change drifted to me via the earpiece. I didn’t know, but if I had to guess, they’d be running low on ammo pretty damn soon. When you carried two hundred rounds all day, you’d think you could do without the weight, but in a firefight two hundred seemed like about twenty percent of what you needed.

I acknowledged, shooting a right at the next junction between low buildings and checking my corners as naturally as I breathed. More naturally, in fact, because I was panting like an asthmatic in an orgy right then, but my weapon drills were slick.

I peeked out of cover low and ducked back, relying on the mental picture I’d taken to see a guy with the NRC equivalent of our DMR—like a short-range sniper system—behind solid cover and popping up to take shots at the top of the compound wall.

I gave Mac a three count and popped out, lighting the fucker up and making him jerk as the bullets struck his armor. His left hand flew up exposing his armpit, and I reckoned at least two bullets entered there to mess his day up on a permanent basis.

As he fell, another guy poked his head out to take a bead on me but a burst of fire from the wall drilled him in the face and neck to sit his ass down.

“Barton, hold position. We’re coming out,” Mark ordered. I moved the ten paces to the guys we’d just taken down and pulled the DMR out of my guy’s hands to slip the sling diagonally over my torso and wiggle it around so it didn’t interfere with reloads or my—Landry’s—axe.

Two figures slipped through the gloom to my side, giving me a sense of relief to be close to actual people on my side. Mac, dressed in civilian clothing with a heavy carrier covering his upper body and a combat cover on his head, looked me up and down.

“Help your fuckin’ self,” he said, but the smile on his face told me I was already forgiven for pulling off a cosplay of him. His eyes flickered to the handle of the axe protruding over my right shoulder, but I cut off any questions.

“It’s part of the long story. Landry gave it to me before we jumped.”

“Landry? That old buzzard’s here?” Mac gawped before Mark interrupted.

“No time. Move around the compound anti-clockwise.”

We moved. Low and fast from cover to cover toward the sound of gunfire to find a knot of New Liberty security forces massed behind cover, all bunched up like a squad of idiots. Mac pushed to the front and nodded each of us to either side before pulling a little black cylinder from a pouch.

I moved, putting distance between us and getting a flanking position on the dumbasses, just as Mac activated the grenade and lobbed it in a perfect arc to land right in the middle of them.

If they’d been more spread out, if they hadn’t huddled together to piss their pants because they found themselves in a real firefight, that grenade might have killed one or two of them.

It might have wounded a couple more even, but what it wouldn’t have done—which it did—was vaporize three of the assholes and send tiny shards of shrapnel into the rest of them, leaving only two people uninjured.

I rose up and drilled rounds into the ones who weren’t dead or dying as Mark and Mac popped up to take out the others.

“Who the fuck are these guys?” I asked, turning one over with my boot and finding someone so un-Russian it was confusing as hell.

“We’ve got local security forces and PMCs as well as a squad of spets, from what we can tell. Come on,” Mark said, running to complete the loop to attack the attackers on the west side of the compound.

* * *

Komarov stood and slapped his hands against himself to knock the dust from his armor. His beard smelled of burned plastic and something flickered on his left forearm, making him slap at it and only succeed in setting his right palm alight with whatever the incendiary fuel was that had contaminated him.

He bent to rub the fire in the dust and smother it that way before standing again and blinking the grit from his eyes.

“Daniil?” he called out, only there was no sound. He tried again, louder and louder until the faint, muffled sounds of his voice reached him through the haze of deafness caused by the explosion.

He ran back the last images his mind had captured in his thoughts, seeing Federova call for more ammo to be brought up as he worked the mortar like an expert. Komarov was proud of his soldier’s efficiency, putting that skill down to endless hours of training as he varied yield and fuse time to keep the enemy guessing about what the bombs would do. He programmed a few of them to heat seek, which gave them the ability to self-target, but their explosions were only small enough to injure a single person.

He recalled the image of a bright flash erupting, of the man carrying the ammo crate disappearing in that flash, and of the subsequent explosions that had thrown him ten feet further away and burned a crater wide and deep enough to hide one of their trucks.

That crater still burned with an intensity and a chemical stink that offended his senses and forced him to walk away.

Those images he was recalling told him that the explosion was no accident, no misfire or malfunction, but that someone there had gotten off a lucky shot and set the spare ammo to blow.

He growled, a low and guttural noise that he could only feel because of his deafness, and he tore open the driver’s door of the nearest truck to reach up and drag the hapless security officer from the cab and dump him in the dirt.

He didn’t hear the protests of the man, not that hearing them would have made him listen or take notice, but instead he crunched the truck into drive and stomped on the throttle to surge it forward and close the gap between him and his enemy.

He reached for his radio to call the forward teams and demand an update, but as he couldn’t hear the sounds of the bit tires digging into the dirt, he didn’t bother trying. He pressed the throttle down harder and pushed the truck onward in search of vengeance.

* * *

Barton

Three more assholes went down to us as we tore through the semi-dark and came at them from directions they didn’t expect. They probably thought we were holed up inside, and the volume of fire coming from the walls was small, so I guessed that made them even more brave.

I bet they thought they were shooting rats in a barrel, but not long after the mortar fell silent and the bombs stopped dropping on and inside the walls, the tide turned against them.

I lost count of how many I killed. That sounds like I’m a real POS, but I did. It was all fire and move done so fast that I’d have had to record the contact to have an idea of the real number with any kind of accuracy.

Some of them were soft targets, and by that I mean they had no idea we were even there at all, not unless any of them took a minute to bleed out and saw us sweep through, but some of them took some real effort to kill.

We hit one patch of cover where we dropped two guys easy enough but found ourselves coming under fire from a low rooftop to force us back behind a building.

Bullets kicked up rocks and dust on both sides to pin us down, and I wondered why they weren’t just firing through the building to degrade our cover that way.

“Krupnick, copy,” Mark said into the radio. I had no idea who the hell Krupnick was but if he could resolve this little situation, then I’d be that motherfucker’s best friend for so long as he drew breath.

“Badger, copy?” Mark tried after Krupnick didn’t respond.

“Stand by one,” Coates said, her voice making it seem like she was moving fast or climbing something.

“Take your time, we’re not exactly free to go about our day,” I muttered.

“Doing my best, asshole,” Coates answered, forcing me to mentally facepalm for annoying her yet again.

“Ah, shit… Mark, Krupnick and Badger took a mortar round right between them by the look of it. They’re gone.”

“Shit… Coates, can you get a bead on the northwest corner? We’re pinned down by fire on the high ground. Looks like a rooftop fifteen or twenty meters away.”

There was silence as Coates moved to reposition, and I imagined her peering through an enhancement optic looking for the bastards keeping us in cover.

A twang sounded and the gunfire my side lessened by half but didn’t stop. Another report of a tungsten freedom pill zipping overhead caused the ensuing meaty crunch of a body piledriving into the ground below, and the dust kicked up by the suppressing fire beside me stopped altogether.

“I’ve got a break,” I said, fighting to get to my feet and running fast before they could get a bead on me.

Coates still fired as I ran for the building they were using as a firing platform, but as soon as I went out of sight from Mark and Mac, I heard a yell like an angry animal and felt the wind driven out of me as two boot soles connected with my back.

I crumpled to the deck, because no matter how hard you are, having an armored soldier use you to cushion a ten-foot drop, you can bet your ass you were going down.

I went with it, rolling when I hit the deck and slamming my chin into hard armor because me and this guy had the same idea. The yell of rage startled me a little because it wasn’t the low growl I expected; just something every bit as hard, only higher pitched.

Realizing I was about to start rolling in the dirt for my life against a woman made no damn difference to me, because only one of us was getting out of this alive and I was all for equal rights.

I rolled back the other way as the singing sound of a metal edge cut the air and a damn trenching tool buried into the dirt about an inch from my eyes.

I spun wildly, trying to create distance and get to my feet in time to see the edge of the tool crackle and glow before it swung and cut through the receiver of my stolen rifle. It stuck there so I let her keep it, shoving her back and reaching for the axe over my shoulder like I’d suddenly overcome years of muscle memory to not reach for the plasma blade or the Mk30 on my leg.

I chopped down but she just hopped back and held her tool up to meet my swing, and all I did was smash the broken rifle in two halves. She reacted quickly, swinging her blade at my face now that it was free of the weapon, making me lean back and avoid the slice by a close enough margin that I felt the heat of the burning edge on my lips.

She reversed the swing so fast. I barely caught it with the shaft of Landry’s axe and threw my body weight forward so my right shoulder slammed into her and knocked the bitch off her feet.

Her back hit the wall of the building and she laughed, like this was fucking foreplay or something, then she did something I was dumb enough not to expect.

Instead of us dueling it out with melee weapons like ancient knights, the bitch drew her fucking sidearm and aimed it at my face.

This is the part when people tell you they closed their eyes or something. Like they had this prophetic moment right before death where they saw all of their mistakes in a flash or some bullshit. You know what I did?

“Wait!” I said, with no idea if she understood me or considering why the fuck she’d wait, but son of a bitch, it worked. She lost a split second through hesitation, like she couldn’t believe how dumb I was—same as I couldn’t.

That moment of hesitation earned her a burst from Mac’s rifle as he rounded the corner and saw what was going on before either of us could figure it out.

I watched as blood and teeth burst from her face before the bullets walked up her face to impact her helmet and pitch her over onto her side.

“Come on,” Mark said as he ran past after Mac, snapping me out of the moment I’d just been sharing with zero time to consider any other possible outcome.

I went, not looking back because there wasn’t time and bullets were still flying.

“Clear out these last few and we make a break for it,” Mark said over the net.

“Who’s gonna fly the damn bird?” Anders asked over the tang-tang-tang sound of his weapon returning fire.

Mark didn’t answer. We followed the sound of the gunfire to come at the last group of the enemy strung out along the east side. I looked up to see a low roof about nine feet up and snapped my fingers at Mac to give me a boost up.

I grabbed the edge and hauled, switching my pull to a push and hovering there as I tried to muscle my way up in full gear and loaded down with weapons. I managed it and rolled onto the roof to unsling the stolen DMR.

I ditched the mag because I didn’t know how many shots were left in it, opting to slip a fresh one in place instead of wasting time counting.

Settling down with my right knee on the roof and my left up to support the gun, I started picking them off one by one until someone finally realized their enemy wasn’t contained like they thought.

The others ran through them, killing those who settled back into cover to cast fearful glances in search of this new threat, and just as suddenly as my day had started, the firing stopped.

“Anyone got any eyes on the enemy?” Mark asked, panting from running and gunning.

Negative responses came back and I slid down off the roof to jog and catch up with the others before they rounded the last corner of the walled compound and Mark slapped a hand on the gates.

They opened up and I saw Anders there, weapon raised, watching behind us. When I walked past, he slapped me hard on the back of the helmet, which filled me with more pride than any senior officer pinning a medal to my uniform could have afforded me.

The gates slid closed behind me as Mark ran into the building shouting for two people I didn’t know to bring out the VIPs.

He came back out ahead of a gaggle of civilians who all looked ready to shit bricks. Coates slid down a ladder with a long rifle slung over her back and a carbine hanging down her front. She jogged over and laid eyes on me, a sneer already on her face, but her words threw me.

“Glad you’re here, asshole,” she said as she angled her run past me to bump my shoulder with hers. I turned to watch her start to open the gates again, like I hadn’t believed what happened, but Mark’s voice brought me back to face front.

“Half a click to the bird. We need to get the ministers off this planet right now and evac them if the system is lost to the NRC.”

He looked back up past me and froze, eyes going wide and gun coming up to his shoulder as a big truck slammed through the gates to smash them open.

Coates was flattened by the swinging metal and lost to sight from the dust the impact had thrown up. My body did its own thing and threw me aside as the truck piled through to bury itself into the building and half collapse it.

Sound went weird again for me, like an explosion had gone off right beside my head, and I heard Mark yelling at us all to run, to go south and not to stop until we got to the shuttle.

I got to my feet on the second attempt and staggered over to Coates, who lay broken in the dirt. I could tell from the way she lay that it wasn’t good, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave her behind there.

Dropping my weapon and scooping her up with both hands, I felt the broken rifle slip off her body as she hung limply in my arms. I ran with her bouncing around but no part of me would allow the thought that she was dead to creep in. I wasn’t going to put her down, no matter what.

We reached the shuttle in a lot less time than it felt like it took, to make the first leg of that journey, and Mark overrode the lockdown to lower the ramp.

I strapped Coates in beside West and Edwards before checking them, finding both still alive but unconscious, and then I forced myself to confirm what I suspected and put two fingers to Coates’ neck.

I shifted position and pressed a little harder, not trusting myself to believe what I thought I’d felt, but it was there all the same. It was weak, but it was a pulse.

“Mark, we need to get these three to a medic right fuckin’ now, man!”

“Working on it,” he answered from the cockpit as he hit buttons and started up the engines.

“CSS Silence, this is Oscar Nine-Five requesting immediate medical support. We are inbound to orbit, how copy, over?”

“Nine-Five, this is the Saratoga, sitrep, over.”

Mark seemed to sag with relief before he filled them in and was given coordinates to RV with the carrier.

“Saratoga, we have CS military elements crashed on the surface,” I cut in, having picked up a headset to listen to the comm. “Somewhere around our sector. It’s the crew of the Olympia shot down in a shuttle during atmosphere transfer.”

“Roger that, Nine-Five, deploying SAR now.”

Chapter 34

Barton

Supercarrier CSS Saratoga

I pieced it together afterward, some from the reports and some from talking to people, but from what I could work out, the training ship was seriously unlucky to run into that NRC patrol. We were even more unlucky to run into them in a sector where there were active British stealth boats hunting for supply ships.

The ambush forced us into the wrong jump lane and right up the ass of the hottest system in the galaxy right then.

Fournier was killed on impact, which made me sad. I liked the guy, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been looking forward to going to war alongside the lumberjack, no matter how little grace he had in the void.

There was talk of Sonora getting some big posthumous award, and quite rightly in my book because the guy was a damn hero, but more than a few people told me I wasn’t going to even feature in the report about what happened on New Liberty Terminal.

That was fine by me. I wasn’t in this for medals. I could catch a stripper’s wearing jorts and a tank top, so I didn’t need any new chest ribbons to make me feel good about myself.

Landry didn’t make it. Neither did the other of his guys, and from what I learned, the legendary senior drill instructor didn’t take the easy way out when they crashed. He was badly hurt and held on for a few hours, right up until just before the search-and-rescue team got there and his last words to some lieutenant of his crew eventually made their way to me.

She’d written it down, and evidently the memories of the old man’s last words were too much for her to recount, so she just handed a tablet over to me.

A tear dropped on the screen after I’d read the few words the second time over, searching for more meaning than I saw at face value.

It simply read: “Tell Barton to keep it. Get some.”

I walked through the carrier’s gangways like I had nowhere to be, because I didn’t, and found my way eventually to the medbay. I say eventually because the carrier was by far the biggest place I think I’d ever been in my life. This thing was like Midway Station all squeezed down into small compartments.

West was there, lounging on a bed in sweats on her right side.

“Here he is, coming to look at my ass again,” she said when I walked in. I smiled, putting on the happy persona I thought she needed to see.

“How you doing, West?” I asked, making a show of leaning back to squint at her raised rump like I was seeing if they’d put it back together properly.

“Oh, much better now I got another pain in my ass here.”

“Good one,” I answered, holding up both thumbs to out-sarcasm her.

“She’s bored, Barton, same as me,” Edwards said from a chair beside a bed that looked freshly made. She had the hair on the right side of her head shaved down to the dome and a clean line of staples running over a half-moon scar where they’d had to go in and fix a minor bleed or something. I wasn’t paying that much attention when they told me, but I knew it had been pretty serious.

“And what about the pickle?” I asked, peering to the end of the ward as if I could see through to the next room where Coates hung suspended in a healing tank.

“No change, but the doc thinks she might make it,” Edwards said sadly.

The list of her injuries was still pretty vivid in my memory. She’d broken both arms, her back in two places, and needed reconstructive surgery day after day before they fixed everything and sedated her. Having spent time in one of those healing tanks, I could swear to their efficacy, but I still felt bad for her. Mainly because if she survived, her time on the Odin teams was probably over.

Having successfully lowered the tone, I asked if they wanted to hear the latest, and both women perked up at the chance of learning anything from outside the medbay.

“Those politician people we got out? They’ve taken over full control of the government now and the dude who was trying to get the NRC involved saved everyone a job.”

I saw eyebrows go up in question, so I mimed drawing a sidearm and pulling back the slide before aiming the imaginary piece up under my chin and acting out the eruption of brain and bone from the top of my skull.

“Nice,” West said.

“Yeah, don’t think that shit’ll come out with a little fresh paint anytime soon,” I told them.

“So we own the system now? I mean, like, we did anyway but we own it again now?” Edwards asked.

I shook my head. “New Liberty Terminal is officially an independent colony with its own government and everything. We’re just their best friends now.”

“By that you mean we provide security and they give us most of their mining resources?” West asked.

“Uh-huh, that’s how I read it,” I answered. “Tax dollars hard at work. I think we get a permanent base out here too, which gives us a lot of control over the lanes.”

“Control of fucking territory and resources, that’s all it is,” Edwards groaned, her speech a little slower than usual, like she was one beer into having too many.

“Always has been and always will be,” West said. “Peace is something everyone else gets to enjoy after we’ve earned it for them.”

“Peace, my hairy ass,” I said, eyes fixed in a daze on the back wall of the ward as I thought about how light and limp Coates had felt in my arms when I’d carried her out.

Before either of them could come up with a smart comeback the door opened again and Mark walked in.

The usual round of insulting banter ensued, of which I partook with as much effort as I could muster, before Mark cut the niceties.

“Anyway, I bring orders… Edwards, you’re getting shipped back to Midway, only you’re on medical leave until cleared for flight again. West, you’re going back to Hades via Midway for the last of your continuation training, and after that you’re being assigned command of Five-Five to refit and conduct team training until you’re good to deploy. The other guy, Valdez? He already shipped back to Hades to complete training.”

“Valdez? I thought his hand was all fucked up?” West asked, but Mark was shaking his head.

“Yeah, apparently he was given the timescales for reconstructive surgery and opted for a prosthetic instead. Said he didn’t want to sit the rest of the war out waiting to heal and get fit again.”

I waited for my name, wondering why if Valdez was already on a ship heading back to finish selection my name hadn’t been called for that transport, but Mark just slipped the small tablet in his leg pocket.

“Uh, Mark?” I said, giving him my best “uh, what the hell?” expression.

“Oh, yeah, Barton, you pulled the short straw. You’re also going to Midway to re-up with us. Welcome to Nine-Five, dickhead.”

My face must’ve lit up like an alarm panel because he held up both hands for me to slow down.

“Temporary assignment, until Coates is assessed for active duty.”

“But…” I looked at West, who just smiled at me and shrugged. I wondered why she had to go back and I didn’t, but whether it was arrogant of me to think it or not, I guessed that Landry giving me his axe was kind of a seal of approval in a pretty significant way.

“Don’t get too comfortable, Barton,” West warned me. “When Coates gets out of here, you’ll get kicked back to my team, just you watch. You’ll miss my ass and you know it.”

“I’ve seen enough of your ass, thank you and goodnight,” I shot back. But when I did, I saw Edwards looking distant and upset.

“Edwards, you good?”

My words seemed to snap her out of a daze and she forced a smile back at me.

“Fine, just tired,” she said, but the way she looked up at Mark made me see a little something I hadn’t noticed before. She didn’t want to get pulled away from him.

Mark saw it too and walked over to lay a hand on her shoulder.

“We’ll be back at Midway soon enough, but we’ve got a job to do first.”

“What job?” I asked as we walked away from the medbay. Mark held up a finger to his lips and said nothing all the way to the section designated for SOG use. Seeing Mac and Anders lounging in worn seats, I gave both a nod as Mark opened his mouth to say the words I really didn’t want to hear.

* * *

Barton

Interstellar Space, Sector Four

“I knew Landry for nine years, and he was a salty old bastard even back then,” Mac said, raising a glass before knocking back the contents and holding it out for a no-look refill.

Anders, sitting to his right, clinked the neck of the bottle against the rim of the waiting glass to pour by feel, sloshing a distinctly unmeasured amount into the glass in silence.

“I heard he came out of the womb with a purple heart and a mustache, then started barking orders at the doctor,” I said, drunk enough to join in with the ceremony as the four of us toasted the dead.

“Probably had a dozen confirmed kills before graduating high school,” Anders muttered.

“You! What the fuck are you doing in my training area? You’re making the damn place look untidy!” Mark growled in a decent impression of the man, complete with a razor-edged knife hand held out in front of him. “Son, you look like the last shit I took, and it was not a satisfying one, you fuckin’ read me?”

They laughed at the impression, but I just smiled. I’d either drunk a little too much to be happy or else the situation was too raw for me.

I was new to their world, and the journey I’d taken to get there had dropped so many damn bodies in such a short space of time that I knew I’d have to deal with it eventually.

Or not. I might just drink more and bottle it up inside until I killed someone I wasn’t supposed to. Jury was still out on that.

Mark laughed softly to himself, not in a way that he found something funny but more like his body didn’t know how to communicate how he felt, and recounted the story.

“He was right beside me when we breached the Ivanov. Our team leader ate a big chunk of debris when we crossed and wiped himself out. No way he saw it coming. One minute he was there, just ahead of me, the next he was spinning away in two parts. Landry took command of what was left of us…” He put his head down, shaking it slowly as if he couldn’t believe the memory.

“I swear, to this day I’ve never seen anyone clear a deck so fast. His drills were slick as hell.”

“Yeah, he ran me through the kill floor on Hades until my feet bled,” Mac groaned, leaning back. “Son of a bitch ran the floor solo first, and still none of us could beat his times.”

“Yeah, the old bastard was superhuman. Takes a special kind of turn to float to the top in our game,” Anders intoned, raising the bottle to the open aft airlock and the black expanse of the void beyond before taking a swig directly from the neck.

“It’s the age-old cliché, but he saved my life on that damn carrier. He made the tough call to fall back when he saw that we were all going to die there if we stayed. He took out two NRC commandos with a bullet in his left leg, slapped a damn pressure seal over the wound to maintain his suit’s integrity, then just carried on. I swear he was more pissed about the damaged gear than getting shot.”

I reached down to feel the worn, shiny handle of the axe resting against my right calf, running my fingers along it before I lifted it up to spin the battle-scarred head of it.

“I’ve personally seen that thing take a life,” Mark said wistfully, slurring his words just a little.

Yeah, me too, I thought, recalling the way the man’s body had jerked when the burning edge of the blade was embedded in the top of his back.

Physically, the weapon was beautifully crafted, almost perfectly balanced with an obvious weight bias toward the bearded axe head, but the actual weight of it was far more than the sum of the materials used to create it.

I’d been handed a piece of Odin history, a part of the lore that ran through the special operations underworld, and at no point did I feel qualified or worthy to even hold it, let alone own it.

“And the old buzzard chose this scrawny motherfucker to carry his axe,” Mac said, voicing exactly how I felt about myself without any of the negativity. He spoke with pride, like I belonged and that the axe in my hand was an obvious sign that I deserved to be there.

“Wrong place, wrong time,” I said. Only me, West, and Valdez made it out of there alive. From the Odin part of the crew at least, because most of the others made it.

Valdez opted to get a prosthetic hand and was probably already heading back to Hades to get his new axe and learn how to use it. West was the same, only she was taking charge of a team, and I felt a little sorry for her because not only would she be new, she’d have to be in charge, so she wouldn’t have the luxury of settling in before she had to make her mark.

That left me, and I told myself I was only holding the axe in my hand because I was the recipient of some dumb luck. Anders scoffed at my words and sat up to point a finger at my face.

“That’s bullshit. If he didn’t think you could handle it, he’d have kicked your ass out the door of that shuttle and kept it himself. He wanted you to have it, so don’t you disrespect his memory by thinking it ain’t yours.”

I said nothing. I wanted to believe that, but honestly the cocky little prick I was even a year ago seemed to be keeping quiet when I needed him the most. It was a sobering thought to know I’d grown up, at least a little, and I put that down to a combination of having seen some shit and gotten a look at the bigger picture.

I held the axe, thinking about what to say, and squeezed in the right place to make the plasma edge flicker to life for just a second before I let it go.

I contemplated getting up and walking into the open airlock to strap it to the metal box bearing Landry’s remains, but I knew I wouldn’t. It was mine now. I’d earned it, and now I had to live up to the reputation that would come with it.

I stood just watching the little box for a while, wondering if my body would one day be reduced to a tiny pile of ash and dust. I wondered if the axe in my hand now would be there, gripped tightly during my final moments to ensure I was ready for the next life.

I switched the axe into my left hand and reached up with my right, hitting the switch to close the airlock as the others stepped up beside me.

To my surprise it was Anders who spoke, his voice melodic and carrying more weight than it usually did.

“My eyes shall not lower. My knees shall not bend. My head shall not bow. I rise again, but not alone.”

My body tensed up with the sound that came next, as all three of them combined their voices to intone the final words of the ritual I did not yet know.

“For my brothers and sisters await in Valhalla,” they chorused, sending a shudder down my spine at the same time the airlock opened, and Landry’s remains floated out into the black expanse behind our ship.

Silence hung in the air long after the tiny metal box had been swallowed by the void, and in that silence a part of me hardened to accept the burden placed on me, the burden I had earned, and I turned away from the airlock forever changed.

I was Odin now.

Chapter 35

New Russian Confederacy Embassy

Ascension Station, British-Held Territory

Many weeks travel away sat a man as filled with purpose as Barton now felt, only instead of the sense of belonging and strength that the marine was experiencing, this man felt only a rage and loss so keenly that it defined him.

Viktor Komarov did not enjoy his current posting. He had been assigned to the Ascension station’s NRC embassy, and his orders were simple.

He was to stay inside, not to leave, not to speak with anyone regarding recent events, and not to contact anyone outside of the embassy.

Komarov did not like that, especially as the embassy medical staff were abnormally rough when they attended to him daily to dress his wounds and check on his other injuries.

The pain did not concern him; in fact, he enjoyed pain to varying degrees because it made him feel as though he had power over his own body. But the disrespect of their rough hands and their intolerant glares made him want to crush someone’s windpipe.

His rescue from the colony seeking the NRC’s help in maintaining their independent status had been ignominious at best.

It was an English word he knew and liked. He liked how the multiple syllables rolled off the tongue. He liked the way the sounds they made knocked onward to the next as if toppling dominos over. He did not like how it best described the manner in which he’d left the field of his last battle.

When he’d charged the gates of the compound and broken through, his attempt to stop in time had failed completely due to some mechanical error or freak damage caused by the way he drove the truck. Regardless of the reasons, the fact was that he’d crashed the truck so catastrophically that it had knocked him out and left him trapped behind the wheel as the accelerator pedal had bent out of shape to pin him there.

But it was more than that. The pedal had shattered his right foot, breaking all of the long bones and destroying the ankle before the pedal crushed the rest of the limb into the cabin floor.

When he came to and heard the total absence of battle raging around him, he fully understood the severity of his injury. He had roared in rage and pain before beating the steering wheel so savagely that he broke more bones in his left hand, not that he knew it until much later, before the few surviving members of his team arrived at the compound and found him.

He had raged even more at them, demanded to know where the enemy was, insisting that they tell him where the bastards who had killed his brother had fled to. When he heard that the planet was lost and that the allied forces were swarming the system after destroying most of the NRC fleet, he raged some more.

Pulling the trenching tool from his back, he activated the plasma edge and pressed it into the steel floor of the cab. Rubber and metal burned and stank as it gave off noxious gases, but eventually he forced three cuts into the thin floor of the cabin and used his free foot to stomp down and loosen it enough that his trapped right foot slid free.

The pain of that pressure coming off tested him. He found that it was not a pain he could endure, and worse still, he suspected he had suffered some serious damage that might threaten his very existence.

He lost consciousness as the burning cold of the pain crept up his leg, and he was recovered from the planet with the last of the fleeing traitors and private military who, for reasons of their own, did not want the Combined States military checking their identities.

Such an ignominious exit from battle, such a humiliating defeat, hurt him as much as the emergency operation to remove his foot had.

Now, ordered to remain in the dark and say nothing, he forced himself to become fully attuned with the prosthetic so that he could return to the front and finish the job he’d gone to do.

When his orders were varied one day, he dressed in clean uniform and walked with only a slight limp noticeable to those who watched him walk the interior of the embassy.

The two men, assigned from the military branch of the internal security ministry, followed him at a respectful distance but still did not let him out of their sight.

The very notion that he needed a protection detail at all, let alone protection while confined to the inside of the embassy, was an insult to the man in so many ways.

Had they just told him to his face that he was confined to the embassy under guard until someone far away in terms of distance and status decided his fate, he would have accepted that.

His walk led him to the new ambassador’s office—a joke title as all knew the man had been a soldier of little renown and a spy of legendary status—where he was ushered inside on arrival and invited to sit.

“I prefer to stand, Comrade Ambassador,” he said, not wanting to explain that getting up and down from low chairs was still tricky for him and his as yet incomplete adaptation to the part of his body he couldn’t feel.

“V nogakh pravdy net,” Orlov said lightly, watching as the big soldier bristled at the insult to his honesty.

“There is truth in me, but sitting is uncomfortable for my leg,” he growled back, forced into admitting weakness in place of accepting the light accusation of dishonor.

“As you wish,” Ambassador Konstantin Orlov said, sweeping one long tail of his house coat aside before gliding to the desk like a vampire.

There he poured the customary glass of vodka for himself and Komarov, only he poured a third that set the spetsial soldier on edge because he hadn’t detected anyone else inside the dimly lit room. As if seeing that momentary look of self-doubt, Orlov chuckled lightly.

“I have asked another to join us in a few minutes, but his appointment is later than yours so that we can talk first.

“Za tee-byá!”

Orlov tossed back the drink as Komarov muttered the polite response to the informal toast to his health.

“As you know, the internal ministry has conducted a review of the actions on New Liberty,” Orlov said. The statement felt incomplete to Komarov, as if the man was trying to gauge his mood before either dropping the hammer on his hopes or worse.

Komarov said nothing, letting the silence string out to see if the ambassador would crack first.

“Tell me, Major. How do you justify the losses?”

“All this is in my report,” Komarov answered, knowing full well the man had access to such documentation.

“Which I have read, but I wish to hear it from you personally.” Orlov stared at him, his mouth locked in a politician’s smile, waiting for the response.

“At the time of the assault it was not clear that the colony would be lost to the battle in the void. I acted and gave orders to prevent the enemy from securing political leaders opposed to our involvement. I think that some with political ambitions are looking back on failure as stupid.”

Orlov watched him for a while, letting him taste the medicine of silence this time, before he answered.

“I agree with you, Major. In this regard at least. I do not believe that to review actions taken in the moment is an accurate form of assessment, when all the eventual facts are already known. It is for this reason that I recommended you retain your rank and your position.”

Komarov blinked, staring at the man as if the devil had just made a pact with him, and he’d had no prior knowledge of it. There was no way such a man as the ambassador would risk his own reputation to support a failure, unless he had plans to make use of Major Viktor Komarov personally.

“And what does the ambassador require me to do in return for this recommendation?” he asked, getting straight to the point. Orlov smiled happily, glad that the hulking beast before him understood the way of things and that he was in his debt.

“Nothing yet, but there may be an opportunity for you to show your gratitude in the future,” he said, almost disappointing Komarov that he wasn’t to be immediately sent on some dangerous mission requiring violence.

“You will have orders by the end of the week, so until then I invite you to enjoy the freedom of the embassy,” Orlov went on, ending the conversation by standing and holding his hand out toward the door. Komarov nodded once, almost a hint of a respectful bow or a gesture of servitude even, before he turned and left.

At the door, he came face-to-face with a woman. He was struck by the sharp lines of her cheekbones which accentuated her slightly sunken eyes. Those orbs were dark and spoke to him of a person who had seen and done things no normal person could live with.

Looking her up and down, he took in the exquisite cut of her army dress uniform and seeing a rank insignia the same as his own, he fought down the feelings of needing to prove himself better than her. That uniform bore no medals, much as his own did not, but it did proudly display the black badge of a set of spread wings identical to the one he wore.

“Major,” he said, moving to step past her and stopping because she did not move aside.

“Major Komarov. I am Major Verlinsky,” she said, offering a hand for the bull of a man to shake.

He took it, squeezing just enough to let her know he dominated every such encounter, but her strong fingers applied pressure to his smallest knuckle and her index finger pressed into his wrist to prevent him from bringing anything like his full force to bear on the grip.

Clever. This woman who has risen in a man’s world has learned to adapt instead of trying to compete, he thought, liking her a little more than he already did. He had fought alongside many women in his career, even having to face the individual intricacies of commanding a unit with female soldiers, but he had yet to see many rise far in the special operations field.

“Major,” he said, offering a stiff bow of his head before moving forward again. She relented, stepping back slightly to allow him to leave without pushing her aside.

“Come in, Verlinsky,” Orlov said, sliding the full vodka glass across his desk at her while he refilled his own. The two toasted one another and she waited to be invited before taking the seat opposite the new ambassador.

She sat stiffly, back straight through a combination of discipline and a tightly fitted uniform coat. She didn’t ask for an update. If there was news, then she would be given it. If there was updated intelligence relating to the proposed operation, it would be provided to her.

“I have a personal favor to ask of you, Major,” Orlov said. Verlinsky was not naïve enough to believe that anything she could do as a personal favor to the ambassador was anything but a direct order from the ministry, so she nodded.

“Of course, Comrade Ambassador.” Orlov smiled, happy that the woman sitting opposite him understood how things needed to be done. In truth, he wanted someone like Komarov, a man with a reputation of vicious, bloodthirsty violence when unleashed against the enemy, but after recent events, he couldn’t trust the man to stick to the plan. Which was why Verlinsky had been sent to Ascension.

“Major Komarov will accompany your deployment, only he will not be in overall command.”

Verlinsky nodded again, accepting what was coming next before the words were even spoken. Orlov gave them anyway, because he enjoyed how they sounded.

“You come highly recommended, Major, but your lack of combat experience against the Combined States is of concern to some. Not me, you understand, but others deeper inside the ministry who have never seen a front line.”

“Yes, sir,” Verlinsky said, not wanting to nod a third time and appear like a trained puppy.

“Komarov is an animal. An animal. And he is worth a hundred men in battle, but recent events have clouded his judgement. You are to be his judgement, Major, and it is imperative that this mission does not fail. A great deal of time, money and valuable human resources have been expended to bring us to this outcome.”

“I understand, Comrade Ambassador,” Verlinsky said, hiding her true feelings of being used like a handler rather than the capable soldier and leader she knew herself to be.

Komarov’s orders came the following morning, just as he stepped from the shower in his quarters after scrubbing his skin so thoroughly all over that he appeared to have been burned by the sun.

The crisp, efficient rap at his door was answered by a deep rumble interpreted by the person knocking as an invitation to enter, and Komarov found himself looking at an NRC soldier barely old enough to be away from his mother.

He smiled, not at the boy but at his memory of his younger brother once being that thin around the neck and just as hairless, and the young officer cleared his throat with a squeak.

“Comrade Major. Your orders,” he said, his right arm shooting out dead straight bearing a data transfer stick.

Standing with a naked torso and a large towel wrapped around his waist but still barely big enough to cover him fully, Komarov paused a moment before reaching out to take it.

The boy stared wide-eyed at his muscles and tattoos covering almost all of his upper body. His gaze roved down until the face fell on seeing the prosthetic foot and lower leg.

“You have something else for me, Comrade?” Komarov asked, startling the boy into looking back up into his bearded face.

“Sorry, I…”

“You want to know how this happened, yes?” he asked, seeing the fear and excitement in equal measures displayed on his messenger’s face morph into a nod.

“Kon’ o chetyryokh nogakh, da I tot spotykaetsya,” he answered.

The young soldier pondered the words for a moment, considering their meaning as deeply as his limited life experience would allow.

Komarov smiled and leaned forward to push the door closed, sending the boy out ahead of it and waiting for the click.

A horse has four legs, yet still it can stumble, he thought, ruminating on the wisdom he’d imparted without knowing why. Telling the boy that even legendary killers such as himself can make mistakes felt like a betrayal of self, but the honesty in his words more than made up for the moment of weakness and self-doubt.

Perhaps it was some kind of fatalism infecting him after the loss of his brother and his failure to kill those responsible for his death. Perhaps it was surviving the injuries and having to live the rest of his life incomplete.

Whatever it was, far from it frightening or angering him, he felt freed by it.

So many proverbs, so many idealistic things people say when they fail to make sense of the events that befall them and those around them, and all of it came down to accepting that they had no control over what would come to pass.

Komarov scoffed at himself for the moment of sentimentality, reminding himself that the future was there to be earned, to be won in bloody victory, and only a fool accepted fate or destiny as solace.

Plugging the data stick into his tablet, he propped the screen up and sat opposite it, bending low so his face fell within the area to be scanned for his identity.

“Viktor Komarov,” he said slowly, carefully enunciating each syllable as if explaining his identity to someone unable to understand his accent. That completed the second stage verification, before the tablet invited him to prove he was still alive by placing his thumb against the screen so it could verify he still had a pulse.

The fact that the NRC’s security protocols catered for a person’s dead body to be used to gain access to their systems spoke more about their own methods than it did the enemy’s, but as the screen lit up and he inserted the data key, he paid that no mind.

The document heading changed color, indicating that it had been opened and gave the time stamp of the action.

His orders gave him a little over an hour to report to the ship he was set to embark on, along with others of his breed who were, from what he could tell, already sealed inside the tubes his people unkindly referred to as a grob, meaning coffin thanks to their narrow and claustrophobic feel.

The next part of his orders, forcing him to move the window bearing the written instructions and bring up a galactic system chart, told him why the coffins were required because the mission destination took them closer to Earth than he had expected to go, instead of outward toward the fringes of colonized space, all the way back to one of the earliest colonies his nation had founded.

He recognized the name immediately, as would any NRC soldier who had ever experienced living off a military ration pack or eating freeze dried goods from a rehydrater and had suffered his own bouts of gut cramping Zapor Tuva caused by the dense rations.

Reading on, he saw the additional document providing the intelligence to support the mission, but with the departure time looming, he closed the tablet and threw on clothing, his body and hair still dripping from the shower.

Knowing the mission would be equipped with everything he needed, he dressed in uniform and lifted a single pack containing his trenching tool and a few other items, then headed directly to the docking area of Ascension where his credentials and look of resting malice saw him ushered through to the ship-boarding airlocks.

“I demand to know the meaning of these orders, sir,” a major bearing the parachute emblem on his fatigues said. The man he spoke to, a full colonel, did not like the man’s tone and made that clear.

“These orders mean that you are no longer commanding this mission, Major. Do you doubt the intelligence and wisdom of the NRC’s leadership?”

The officer saw the danger in the question and backed down, falling back on an unreadable expression and a straight back to protect him from his unintentionally seditious tone.

Komarov walked past, deliberately sauntering too close to the exchange and shooting a smile at the angry major who had—he suspected strongly—been denied his chance to fight by Komarov’s inclusion on the mission.

Walking along the rows of soldiers already entombed in their sleep tubes, Komarov found the last remaining vacant one being watched over by a figure.

That figure was muscular and lean, but even from the back he recognized the female major who he had met in Orlov’s office. The chance meeting became obvious to him in that it was by design, and he cleared his throat to announce his arrival.

“Comrade Major,” Verlinsky said, spinning around and speaking before she could’ve seen who was behind her. She handed him a piece of paper, thin and frail by intent, and watched his face impassively as he read.

Screwing up the paper and placing it carefully on his outstretched tongue, Komarov drew it into his mouth and chewed twice before swallowing, never letting his eyes fall from hers.

“You understand?” she asked simply.

“I understand,” Komarov accepted, placing himself under her command as per the secret orders he had just destroyed.

“Good. To put it plainly for you, I will not tolerate any disobedience of my orders. You are here for redemption, Comrade, not personal vengeance. See this as an opportunity to restore the faith that our leadership had placed in you before…” She trailed off, gesturing at the prosthetic foot hidden beneath uniform pants and a large boot.

Komarov said nothing, just took a loud, long, slow breath in through his nostrils that told Verlinsky he would come to heel, but it was under protest.

She doubted it was because of her gender. A man like him would see people for their fighting ability and worth without discriminating over such petty preconceptions as the ability to bear children.

“Very well. Time to take a nap, Comrade Major,” she said, gesturing at the sleep tube and watching him climb inside and comply with the first order she gave him.

Epilogue

BG-192 “Ground Zero”

Doctor Amelia Thorne sat alone in the lab, swinging gently side to side on a chair as she waited for a mechanical centrifuge to run its program to the end.

“Are you sure you want to wait for that? You could always dump the sample and run another first thing in the morning?” Travis King said as he paused at the door.

“No, I think it’s best if I just get it done now. I promise I won’t be long, Doctor King.” Her reassuring smile made him feel a little pang of jealousy for the youthful eagerness she exhibited, and he swiped his ID card over the door reader before stepping into the exit airlock to start the decontamination process.

The lab was empty at night, and although it was video monitored twenty-four seven, there wasn’t an actual staff allowed inside the sealed bubble after the close of the day. Armed soldiers in respirators made sure of that, which was why it had taken her so long to perfect the theory of how to get the sample out.

She had been desperate at one point, even considering ingesting as much as she could and voiding her stomach into the water filtration system, or more effective still, to inject it directly into her blood and cut both wrists in a similar way that would infect everyone on the planet.

There were more people on the surface of BG-192—what even some of the scientists were now calling ground zero—than there ever had been, and the rich, plentiful deposits of tungsten just below the surface of what had once been a seabed were ignored in favor of the bigger prize of alien technology.

It was well known that the British or the NRC would pay a hundred lifetimes of riches to anyone who could bring them a sample, but Amelia Thorne had far bigger plans for it than just handing over stolen property for money. She had a duty, a responsibility even, to prevent humanity from interfering with the natural way of the galaxy as they had each and every time they set foot on a new planet.

Her own government sanctioned the destruction of entire ecosystems simply to make fuel of mined mineral deposits.

Rare elements were more important to the NRC, to the Japanese and the British, than studying a previously undiscovered species.

She despised her own kind for doing exactly what they had throughout human history—rape, pillage, and burn their way across everything they encountered—and she knew she was presented with a unique opportunity to turn that seemingly unstoppable progress on its head.

Having carefully constructed the tubing system and taped it to her body beneath her clothes, she carefully extracted the biological substance in sixty milliliter syringes and tucked it into her left sleeve where she twisted the end of the syringe onto the tube and gently depressed the plunger.

Six more times she did that, until the open end of the tube beside the one connected to the syringe showed the dark fluid that seemed to roll and squirm like it was excited at the prospect of being released.

Sealing off both ends of the tube, she discarded the used syringe but made sure to pick up a fresh one still inside the sealed packet that wouldn’t be removed from her when she exited.

She decontaminated, left the lab, and walked to the main part of the town where everyone seemed to congregate.

She ignored that civilian area, instead using what she knew of the bio-substance and how it affected sentient, organic beings, deciding that the best people to expose it to first were the ones who could force others to do their bidding by the threat of violence.

Walking through the camp as if invisible, because none of them thought to question why a young female scientist might be visiting a military barracks late in the evening, she stepped inside the back of the building used to feed them.

Looking around after waiting for her opportunity, she uncapped both ends of the tube running inside her clothes and lifted one end to her mouth to blow hard into it. From the other end, over the bubbling vat of sauce, poured the substance.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” barked a deep voice. Amelia spun, a guilty look written all over her face, but the man wearing white stalked toward her wearing a wry smile.

“Couldn’t wait, huh? Don’t you worry, there’ll be plenty to go around. Why in the hell you coming down here to eat anyway?”

Thorne smiled, still wearing the guilty look, and was glad that she’d taken time to research her chosen delivery method and talked to the army chefs on more than one occasion.

“I swear, you’re the only person I’ve ever met that actually prefers army food,” he said, lifting the heavy pot off the stove with both hands ready to serve it to an entire company of troops.

* * *

The story continues in . . .

Odin

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